Mr Monk Goes to Disneyland
by Bob Wright
Summary: For Monk, it's not the Happiest Place on Earth. But he'll have to put up with it as he tries to solve the murder within its walls. NOW COMPLETED.
1. Chapter 1

MR. MONK GOES TO DISNEYLAND

BY

BOB WRIGHT

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Although Bob Iger and Roy Disney are included in this story, their mannerisms and personalities as shown here are used for dramatic effect, and any relationship between these and their genuine mannerisms and personalities is purely coincidental. All other Disney personnel are fictitious and any relationships to actual employees are equally coincidental.

All utilized Disney characters are registered trademarks of The Walt Disney Company and/or Pixar Animation Studios. Adrian Monk and all related characters and indicia are registered trademarks of NBC/Universal, Mandeville Films, and Touchstone Television. And now, as always, sit back and enjoy the story.

The sleek station wagon cruised its way up the ramps of the parking garage, early morning sunlight glancing off its sides. It slowed as it reached the fifth floor, inched down the various rows, and finally coming to a stop in Section E-7. No sooner was the engine shut off than the passenger door burst open. Adrian Monk leapt out and started scraping away at his pant legs. "Never get it off, never get it off!" he whimpered out loud to himself.

"Mr. Monk, for the ninth time, it was an accident," Natalie Teeger climbed out of the car and strode over to him, "I had to turn or we would have been broadsided by that pickup!"

"Look at it!" Adrian pointed hysterically at barely noticeable coffee stain on his inseam, "It's irreparable! I can't go into the park like this! I shouldn't even be outside like this!"

Natalie exhaled a deep sigh of frustration. She tapped on the back window. "Julie, go dig out another pair of Mr. Monk's pants for him," she informed her daughter.

"Which suitcase?" Julie stared at the myriad of suitcases—at least forty of them—cluttering the back trunk.

"Number twenty-seven, compartment C," Adrian told her, pinching his legs tightly together. "Mr. Monk, no one's watching you," Natalie told him, pointing around at the practically deserted section of the garage around them.

"Oh they're watching, trust me on that," Adrian glanced around nervously, half-expecting people to pop up out of thin air, "And there's nowhere I can change, that much I know."

There's a…" Natalie stopped briefly as Julie pushed the heavy suitcase through the open window. "...bathroom right over there, I saw," she pointed to the far corner of the garage.

"I see," Adrian nodded, noticing it, "Listen, if I'm not back in ten minutes…well, remember me fondly, because this is going to be heavy-duty."

A response to this remark wasn't forthcoming from either of them. Adrian lugged the suitcase toward the bathroom. They'd been given a three week respite from their usual duty back up in San Francisco, and Natalie had suggested as a vacation a trip to Los Angeles area, and in particular Disneyland, which Julie had been hoping to visit for years. Ordinarily, Adrian would have had reservations about such a trip, but the mention of Disneyland had made him somewhat eager to come along. For when his wife had been young, she'd told him early in their marriage, she'd made special wish one time when she'd visited the park. A wish that one day a fair prince would come and sweep her off her feet. She'd written out this request on a piece of paper, she'd said, and hid it in a special place. "Only my true love will be able to find it," she'd told him when relating the story, "So someday you'll have to go and look for it. I just know you'll find it right away."

The sad irony of the story was that Adrian had made preliminary plans for such an excursion to the park just a few weeks before Trudy had so tragically died. He'd been too emotionally shattered in the intervening years to bother going himself. Now, however, redemption was at hand. If he could in fact find that piece of paper—if indeed it was still even in that park—he knew he'd be making Trudy's wish come true. The only king-sized problem was that Trudy had never given him any further information on its whereabouts. She'd figured any preliminary information would have given its location to him immediately. So the detective knew he was essentially working with a barren cupboard. But he was determined to succeed for Trudy's memory.

Once inside the bathroom, he locked the door, locked himself in a stall, sat down on the toilet—after first grimacing from the very fact that he was on a toilet that from his observations hadn't been cleaned for the last five hours—opened up the suitcase, and extracted a clean pair of pants out of the dozen or so he'd brought along just in case. It took him what seemed like an eternity to redress himself. Once done, he tossed his ruined pants into the trashcan next to the sink and unlocked the door—by leaning his covered forearm against the lock until it slid down. Too many people had touched it already, he'd figured.

"What took you so long?" Natalie scolded him when he finally returned to the car as good as new, "Mr. Monk, you've been gone fifteen minutes. It does not take fifteen minutes to switch pants."

"Well, you're not factoring in several factors," Adrian popped open the rear trunk and took out a large baggage porter's rack. He hefted suitcases 1-6 (labeled respectively FOOD, WATER, WIPES, CLOTHES, SUN PROTECTION, and MISCELLANOUS) and placed them on the rack in descending order. "Remind me to get some cleaner; I'm going to need to give the bathroom a good scrubbing by the time we leave," he informed the Teegers as he locked them into place one at a time.

"Oh this is going to be lots of fun today," Julie couldn't stop from groaning at the sight of the rack.

"Well we're not going to let it bother us no matter how ridiculous Mr. Monk might look dragging his stuff around," Natalie tried to force a happy face as she rubbed her daughter's hair, "We're going to have a great time today, really."

There was a loud squeaking sound as Adrian began rubbing down the windshield of the Saturn parked next to them. "I hope," his assistant added half-heartedly, "Mr. Monk, let's get going, the park's going to open in a half hour."

"Coming," Adrian followed them across the lot, dragging his rack behind him. His first vantage point of the area from the top of the escalator was not a positive one: there seemed to be countless seas of people converging toward the front gate, and he could generally only handle one sea of people at a time, for short periods only. As fate would have it, he knew, today was the opening day for Disneyland's newest thrill ride, one they'd crowed was going to set the standard for all subsequent thrill rides. Which meant there was no way in hell he would ever willingly get on it. Hopefully Julie wouldn't insist on riding it, he pleaded to himself.

He put an arm on Natalie's shoulder as the nearest sea of people swallowed them up. He didn't think he could handle getting lost. The sun was already beating down hard on them, and Adrian, dressed to the nines as he always was, had to strain to ignore the sweating feeling starting to overtake him.

"That guy, that guy over there, his right shoelace isn't tied the same as his left one," he pointed through the crowd.

"Where?" Natalie looked around.

"Right over there, can't you see it?"

"No. And what are we supposed to do, Mr. Monk, ask him to retie it so it does match?"

"It certainly couldn't hurt, Natalie."

"Natalie?" a black haired woman abruptly appeared out of the crowd, "Natalie Davenport?"

"Who…" Natalie looked puzzled for all of five seconds before breaking into a huge smile. "Sandy!" she exclaimed, hugging the woman, "Oh it's great to see you again! I thought you'd gone back east!"

"We did," the woman was equally glad to see her, "It's been so long. How've you been?"

"Good, and bad," Natalie admitted, "This is my daughter Julie," she gestured toward her, "And this is my boss Adrian Monk, maybe you've heard of him."

"Oh yeah, we've heard of him," Sandy shook Adrian's hand before he could do anything about it, "They said on the news he helped stop that bomb threat in San Francisco."

"Yes, that was me," Adrian snapped his fingers frantically at Natalie for a wipe, "You should also thank my brother, he actually defused the bomb—indirectly, sort of. It's Sandy Kopecki, I presume?"

"How'd you know my married name?" Sandy looked amazed.

"It's engraved on your wedding ring there," Adrian pointed at it on her finger, "And you know Natalie…?"

"Sandy and I were roommates in college," Natalie explained, "We were almost like sisters. It's been at least five years since I've heard from..."

"Here's Paul and the kids," Adrian pointed over Sandy's shoulder at a balding, bearded man with a boy of about ten and a girl of about seven. Sandy stared at him in absolute shock as to how he could have known her husband's name. "We've been looking all over for you, honey," the man said, kissing her.

"Paul, you remember how I used to talk about my old friend Natalie, this is her," Sandy introduced them. "Natalie Teeger," she smiled at him as she shook his hand.

"Ah yes, Sandy rarely stopped mentioning you early on," Paul told her. His gaze fell on the detective. "Say, you're Adrian Monk, right?" he asked him.

"Guilty as charged," Adrian felt a little intimidated by his presence, as Paul was at least a good six inches taller than him. He motioned for another wipe after Paul gave his hand a vigorous pumping.

"You were all over the news at Christmas," the girl spoke up from behind her father, "They said you were a bit loopy."

"Loopy?" Adrian frowned, "No, no, I'm not loopy, I'm, I'm good, I'm whack, I'm hip, I'm, I'm down with the bros."

He swayed his hips comically. The Teegers and Kopeckis stared at him in odd wonder. "Hold on, you, you missed a button there," the detective told the boy, bending down to button it for him.

"I'm OK," the boy jumped back in shock at his approach.

"It's OK Josh, he's not going to hurt you…I think," his mother reassured him. "Forgive me, you haven't met Josh and Molly yet," she introduced her son and daughter to Natalie."

"Good to meet the two of you," Natalie smiled at them, "Say, why don't you all come with us? We could catch up on old times and…"

"Uh, Natalie, objection," Adrian raised his hand, "You know me and large groups."

"Would you excuse me for a minute?" Natalie told the Kopeckis. Pulling Adrian aside, she half-barked at him, "Mr. Monk, this woman is a good friend of mine. If you hadn't seen one of your friends in years, you'd like to catch up with them, wouldn't you?"

"I wouldn't know," Adrian shrugged, "I've never had any friends to catch up with."

"Folks you're next," the ticket booth operator called them all forward before Natalie could respond to this. "WHOA!" the man gasped at the sight of Adrian's rack. "Sir, could you bring that over here, please?"

"Why?" Adrian's question was answered as the ticket taker waved to several nearby guards, who promptly grabbed for his suitcases. "Don't, don't roughhouse them," he begged as they took them off the rack and opened them up, "Some of the stuff in there is fragile!"

"Sir, do you really need all this?" one of the guards looked at him quizzically.

"Here, here's the thing: I'm not one hundred percent comfortable going into your park unprotected," Adrian told him, "Trust me, it's a matter of life and death that I have what I have there—and you missed a button too."

He buttoned it up for the guard, who stared down at his shirt. "Well anyway," he continued slowly, "We're going to have to clear all this before you can take it into the park."

* * *

It was close to ten minutes later when all of Adrian's suitcases were fully checked and verified by security. By then the park was packed close to capacity, making the detective feel all the more uncomfortable.

"So where's our first stop?" he asked his expanded group as they weaved their way through the crowd toward the Hub, where several Disney employees in formal suits were standing on top of a raised platform near the entrance to Tomorrowland.

"Dad promised we could go on the new indoor roller coaster first," Josh looked up at his father.

"And that we will," Paul smiled at him, "How about it, Mrs. Davenport?"

"It's Mrs. Teeger now, but yes, I guess that's fine," Natalie nodded.

"I don't think so," Adrian glanced over some trees from which the sounds of buzz saws and blowtorches could be heard painting out a loud melody, "From what I can see from here they're not quite done yet. Still working on the outer façade and some of the…hold up a moment."

He'd spotted an empty paper cup lying on the sidewalk. Unchaining suitcase #6 from the rack, he pulled out a long metallic arm with a three-fingered claw on the end. He walked over to the cup, picked it up with the claw, and dropped it into the nearest trashcan. "Good as new," he told the group once he rejoined it, "This is going to be fun. In fact, we can all help clean up the park together if you want. I brought at least four of these in…."

"Hey look up there," Julie pointed up at the castle. For a human figure was now gliding—no, FLYING from what Adrian's naked eye could see—through the air, and somehow gravity wasn't affecting him, even though the detective couldn't make out any wires or other means of suspension. Half the crowd had noticed him too, for there was many pointing of fingers and excited whispers around them, including among the Disney executives on the platform. "That's incredible!" Molly was gasping, "How does he do that?"

"This is the magic kingdom, honey, anything can happen," Sandy told her daughter, lifting her up to give her a better view of the man's aerial show.

"True," Adrian was frowning, "but something's not right here."

"Mr. Monk, please, I'm sure this is just some pre-show event," Natalie tried to reassure him, "Boy, this is realistic. He looks like he's really flying."

"Should he be flying that high?" her boss countered. The man was at least two hundred feet in the air now, high enough that he was little more than a speck in the blue sky.

"Gee, you're right, he is rather far up," Paul's brow furled, "I hope he does know what he's doing, since…OH MY GOD!"

For the man had now taken a sudden plunge toward the ground out of control, as if some higher force was abruptly shut off his power source. The crowds gasped in horror as he fell out of sight behind the trees, followed by a very loud and very sickening thud echoed from the construction site all over the park. Screams rang out all over the place, and several people fainted in shock. Without thinking, Adrian squeezed his way under the rope holding the crowds back. "Come on," he waved to Natalie, "I think we've got a murder here."

"Well, so much for the nice easy vacation I was hoping for," Natalie shrugged in resignation to her friend as she followed the detective toward the man's abrupt grave.


	2. Lockdown

Scores of people were already converging on the scene of the crime by the time Adrian arrived at the still under-construction Treasure Planet: the Ride building—stepping right into a tray of cement lying on the ground in his haste. Groaning in disgust, he splashed his foot into a nearby fountain to wash the cement off and walked quickly toward the entrance to the ride building. A large hulking guard stepped into his path. "No one enters," he informed him.

"I'm Adrian Monk, I'm a private detective," Adrian told him, flashing his ID. As Natalie pulled up alongside him, he whispered to her, "Get another set of pants, these are shot."

"Mr. Monk, I'm not going to get you another set of pants," she said as calmly as she could, "Nobody's going to notice that. Are we going in?"

"Like I told the guy, no one goes in without permission," the guard said firmly, folding his arms across his chest.

"Say wait a minute," a short bespectacled man looked over the guard's shoulders, "Aren't you Adrian Monk?"

"Yes."

"Walter, let him in," the man instructed the guard, "We could really use his help with this."

"If you say, Mr. Kight," the guard waved Adrian in. "Well, glad to see someone's willing to give us a break, Mr…?" Natalie inquired.

"Tim Kight," the man shook their hands, "Head of the company's amusement park division. Your reputation precedes you, Mr. Monk. What brings you here?"

"Oh, we had a break, so we decided to come down here," Adrian said as he wiped his hands down, "That's what normal people seem to do. You wouldn't have happened to have met my wife when she was younger? Trudy Ellison?"

"Uh, no," Kight told him, "I was only put in this post three years ago."

"She last came here when she was fifteen; left a note here wishing for me to find her?"

"He doesn't know her, Mr. Monk," Natalie told him.

"Blond hair, about five-seven, bright…?" Adrian continued pressing the matter.

"Hey buddy, what are you doing in here?" came a loud call Adrian recognized as Bob Iger's. The head of the Walt Disney Company was in a group of executives standing around the body of the dead man where it lay on top of a board in the middle of a large gap in the building that stretched downward several stories.

"It's all right, Mr. Iger, this is Adrian Monk, he's here to help solve the case," Kight pushed Adrian forward.

"So you're Adrian Monk?" Iger sized the detective up, "Funny, I always imagined you to be a bit taller."

"Sorry," Adrian shifted apologetically, "Anyone know the victim?"

"He's Andy Faulk, he was our chief financial officer," another executive shook his head sadly, "I don't know what happened just now. He was always perfectly sane until now."

"His wife's going to take it hard," a mustached executive lamented, "He told me he was going to get her a new necklace for their anniversary next week."

"So what do you think, Detective?" Iger grilled Adrian, "And try and be quick with it, because we need to finish construction by eight tonight for the live broadcast."

Adrian looked around the site. He walked about, making abstract hand gestures. Finally, after about three minutes of silence, he spoke: "Could you all take a couple of steps backwards; I really feel uncomfortable here."

Half the executives groaned. "Look, Detective, we don't have…!" Iger sputtered.

"You heard the man," Roy E. Disney stepped forward out of the crowd, looking quiet uncomfortable with Iger, "He needs more space."

He took three large steps backwards. The rest of the executives did the same, some clearly with reluctance. Breathing easier, Adrian continued his pacing around the crime scene. "He landed on his back?" he inquired out loud after another long silence.

"Yes," a construction worker stepped forward, "Came falling through the open roof there and hit the ground hard enough to shatter concrete. Didn't see it directly, though; we were all working over there setting the ride tracks in place over there, and the metal bars there obscured it."

"But you're sure he was in a back-down position when he landed?" the detective pressed.

"Yes, he was."

"He's got this wound on his forehead right here," Adrian pointed to a large red mark just above Faulk's eyebrows, "He was hit with something hard there, probably metallic. He was dead before he even landed. This was premeditated murder."

The executives stared at the corpse in wonder. "He's right," Kight whistled, "But why?"

"Say, what's that in his pocket?" Natalie pointed to a plastic bag sticking out of Faulk's right pocket.

"Looks like cocaine," the mustached executive commented. He stepped forward and extracted the bag, which had a fine white powder inside. "Careful, Roger, that may have fingerprints on it!" Kight scolded him.

"Hey Walter," Iger called toward the guard where he was standing at the door, "We've got some evidence here. Take it to central evidence and register it." He turned back to Adrian. "Well, thanks for your work, detective," he told him, "We'll remember when…"

"Hey wait a minute," an elderly executive spoke up, "I don't think he's done yet. How did Andy seem to fly? Even on drugs, there's no way he couldn't have jumped from the top of the castle to here."

"He's right about that," Adrian nodded in agreement. "It's really a blind spot right here. He was thrown down here on purpose. The killer didn't want people to actually see him hit." He stared down the deep pit. "He was aiming to dump the body down this hole, but the board was in the way."

"We needed a pathway between the truck unloading zone and the construction area," another construction worker informed him, pointing out the strict confines of the area, which prevented anyone from walking around the opening, "We only put it up this morning."

"OK, so he made a bad drug deal up in the castle, the dealer killed him and tossed him out the window," Iger said dismissively, "And his body got caught in air currents on the way down. Like I said, good work, Detective Monk. Walter, call the main gate, tell them to lock down the park until further notice," he instructed the guard as he collected the cocaine, "We can't let the guy get away. The rest of you, time to go back to work," he ordered the construction crew, "We open in ten hours!"

"Wrong," Roy Disney interrupted, "This is a crime scene, Iger. We should lock it down and call the cops."

"Forget it Roy," Iger shrugged him off, "We've had enough work stoppage with this ride. It opens tonight or not at all."

"My uncle wouldn't have done this," Disney muttered out loud, "He would have showed concern with…"

"Well your uncle's not here, is he Roy?" Iger told him off with a very visible amount of contempt, "Let's be clear that as president, my decision is final, and I say we open tonight at eight for the show, understood?"

"Um, Mr. Iger, if I may," Adrian stepped forward, "Could you not just lock the gates? There's about a million and half people in here today."

"And?" Iger was looking increasingly impatient.

"And, well, I, I don't do well with large crowds," the detective said tentatively, discomfort on his face already at the thought of being surrounded by so many people. "You couldn't consider importing in several more bathrooms, could you?"

* * *

"You actually asked him to add more bathrooms to the park?" Sandy Kopecki asked the detective about a half hour later as they all stood in line for the Jungle Cruise.

"It's going to be a nightmare," Adrian wasn't really paying attention. He was picking up more trash with his claw and dumping them into the nearest trashcan. There's one million, four hundred eighty-six thousand, five hundred thirty-seven people in here, and they're going to make the restrooms unusable in short time."

"So the guy was on drugs?" Paul asked him.

"As a matter of fact he wasn't," Adrian told him, causing Natalie to look at him surprise, "His right arm was exposed, but there were no marks on it at all. That cocaine was planted, and I think the man who took it out, Roger Chalmers, was responsible."

"Chalmers?" his assistant asked him.

"It was right on his nametag," Adrian pointed out, grabbing hold of several gum wrappers lying up against the ride building with the claw and disposing of them, "Anyway, there was no way he could see that bag from where he was standing, yet he identified it as cocaine before he even pulled it out. He knows more than he's letting on."

"So how did the guy fly then?" Julie asked him.

"I'm still working on it, and…oh no!" Adrian abruptly grimaced, noticing the boat waiting at the dock for them. "OK, we've got to turn back, there's no way we're getting on that."

He turned around, only to find himself blocked by a wall of other patrons. They sputtered in rage as he tried to push back through them. Natalie grabbed his shoulder. "Would you mind telling me what wrong with that boat?" she inquired.

"Look at it!" Adrian gestured at it, "There's no safety railing, it's wet all over, the…!"

"Sir, is there a problem?" the dock manager asked him with a hard look.

"Not really," Natalie took her boss hand and led him gently but firmly toward the boat. Adrian stopped a few inches from the docks and unlocked suitcase number 6 from his rack. He extracted a roll of paper towels and started wiping down the boat's seats. "You'll thank me later," he told a group of befuddles guests that were staring at him in surprise. He sealed the used paper towels in a plastic bag and handed them to the dock manager. "Could, could you dispose of this and watch my things until we get back, if we ever get back?" he asked the man, who stared at the rack as if it were a case of exposed nuclear waste. Without waiting for an answer, the detective climbed, with a certain degree of reluctance, into the boat. "Don't be so uptight," Molly told him, plopping down next to him, "This is a nice slow ride."

"That, that always is a plus, yes," Adrian nodded. The loudspeaker was activated. "Good morning everyone and welcome to the Jungle Cruise," the young man at the wheel announced, "My name's Ryan, and I'll be your guide for…"

"Uh, excuse me, Ryan?" Adrian abruptly raised his hand, "Are there any floatation devices on board, in case we hit a rough spot or two?"

"Um, yes, floatation devices are located right under the seat in case of emergency," Ryan pointed out, "Now we'll be shoving soon and…"

"Uh, me again," Adrian's hand jerked upwards, "Shouldn't we test them first to make sure they all work?"

"Uh, sir, trust me, they work," Ryan told him.

"And how can you be so sure?" the detective continued, "I mean, there's no way of knowing for sure if they're just lying there under the seats."

"Sir, we do rigorous inspections every morning, they work," the guide was getting impatient himself.

"Well I think all of us would like to know for sure," Adrian continued his crusade, "Just, just by a show of hands, who else here would feel safer if we tested all the floatation devices before we started sailing?"

Not a single person on the boat raised their hands. "And it looks like we've got an all-clear signal, so here we go," Ryan no longer cared for the matter anyway, as he pushed off from the dock and gunned the motor loud enough to make Adrian cringe. He grabbed a wipe and rubbed down part of the railing nearest him before clinging onto it for dear life. "We're only going ten miles an hour," Josh told him with raised eyebrows.

"Well, I'd like ten would be…AAAAACCCCCCKKKKKK!" Adrian shrieked and pointed across the jungle foliage, "Snakes, big snakes! Somebody shoot them, kill, kill them, kill….!"

"Yes, like the man in the back says, to you're left we see a crocodile attacking a pair of cobras," the guide pointed, a look of long resignation on his face already.

"They're robots, Detective Monk," Sandy told the detective, who's face was contorted with fear, "They wouldn't put any real snakes into a ride like this. You do realize that, don't you?"

There was a low thump before Adrian could answer. "We're drifting, we're drifting, we're going to beach!" he started hyperventilating, staring over the side now that they were past the cobras, "Hey buddy, watch where you're going!" He gripped the railing harder when the guide failed to answer and prayed the ride would soon be over. If this was a foretaste of things to come in the park, he reasoned, he was going to have a long and trying day.


	3. Hired

"You can open your eyes now, Mr. Monk," Julie told him as the Mad Hatter's Tea Party slid to a stop.

"Are we dead yet?" the detective whimpered. His eyes, flushed with tears, were tightly shut, and he was clinging to the central handhold for all it was worth.

"Boy, you sure don't have the stomach for many rides," Molly rolled her eyes. The ride operator unlocked the teacup's door. "Sir, the ride's over," he told Adrian, who refused to budge an inch. "Sir, you can get up now," he continued. Again, the detective continued to grip the wheel tightly. The operator stepped into the teacup and wrenched his hands free. "You can go now," he informed him.

"You shouldn't run these things so fast," Adrian told him, shaking himself wildly, "You might give someone a heart attack!"

"You were only going ten miles an hour, sir," the operator retorted.

"My point exactly," Adrian half-shouted. He walked toward the exit, where Natalie and Kopeckis were waiting for him. "So did you enjoy it, Mr. Monk?" his assistant asked with just a trace of sarcasm.

"This guy's reckless!" Adrian pointed at the ride, "He could kill people running the ride that fast!"

"Well, it's just about lunch time," Paul glanced at his watch, "Who's up for lunch?"

"Everyone nodded eagerly; it had been a long morning. "How about the Italian eatery in Tomorrowland?" he suggested.

"Fine by me; Mr. Monk?" Natalie asked him.

"Good, good," Adrian called out, unlocking his rack from the Tea Party's retaining fence, "You can get what you want, I'll go select the table for us. I'm already set for lunch. And dinner."

"You brought your own food?" Josh was amazed.

"One can never prepare too much for emergencies," Adrian told him.

The crowds, locked firmly into the park, were everywhere, forcing them to push through large groups of people all the way back through the east side of Fantasyland and into Tomorrowland. Already Adrian was way past his comfortable crowd level. The line outside the Italian eatery didn't ease his worries. It took a good fifteen minutes for them to enter the restaurant. Adrian separated and searched out for an open table. He found one near one of the ordering counters. Opening his briefcase of wipes, he gave the table a thorough wiping down. He then took a bottle of spray cleaner, sprayed the table down, and wiped it even cleaner with the paper towels he'd also brought. Then he wiped down each chair individually. Then he stooped down on the floor---he wouldn't dare actually put his legs, covered up or not, directly on it—and started scrubbing it down thoroughly. Time elapsed quickly, so that no sooner had he started, it seemed, than he felt Natalie's hand tap on his shoulder. "Mr. Monk, you don't have to make it perfect," she told him, "They do have professional janitors here; they can handle the floor."

"Well I'd like to make sure," Adrian pointed out, but he rose up nonetheless. "Ikk!" he gulped out loud once he'd risen, "M-Molly, your spaghetti, it's touching the bread."

"So?" Molly raised an eyebrow.

"And they shouldn't be touching, it's, it's evil," the detective pointed out, "Why, why don't we go back up to the counter and get another plate?"

"I'm not putting them on separate plates," she told him firmly.

"How about if I pay you thirty dollars if you do?" Adrian suggested. Julie elbowed him in the ribs. "What?" he asked.

"Why are you offering her thirty?" she demanded, "You only offered me twenty the last time I let them touch!" she whispered in his ear.

"Well, that was less of an emergency; I mean, that was only carrots, this is spaghetti, I'm sure you can see I'm dealing with more of a mess factor here," Adrian pointed at the plate in self-defense.

"Actually, you can't get another plate, Detective Monk," Sandy told him, "I heard the head cook say they were out of plates now."

"Well, they would with the number of people in this place today," Adrian sighed. He took suitcases 1 and 2 off the rack—which was being laughed at by passers-by—and opened them, revealing he'd separated his food and water into sections labeled LUNCH, DINNER, and EMERGENCY. He placed his lunch rations of salads and Sierra Springs on the table and sat down, trying to ignore the fact that Molly's spaghetti and bread were still touching. "So Sandy," Natalie asked her old friend once everyone was seated, "You said you live in Schenectady now."

"That's right," Sandy nodded, taking a sip of Diet Pepsi, "I work as…"

"A part time reporter for a newspaper in town," Adrian answered her statement for her.

"How'd you know that?" she was more amazed than ever.

"Your fingers show signs of indentation, synonymous with someone who uses the keyboard a lot," he told her, "Plus you've got printer's ink under your fingernails; a broken printer, I presume?"

Sandy glanced down at her fingertips. "Amazing," she commented, "I never told anyone about that accident. You really are impressive, Detective Monk. It's no wonder you make the national papers every time you do something big."

"I have my moments," Adrian remarked, taking his own sip of Sierra Springs, "I guess this is one of them. Tell me, just so I know, have either you or your husband seen a six-fingered man recently?"

"Six-fingered man?" Paul frowned, looking up from his manicotti, "Nope, I haven't seen one of them. And see all sorts of people at the unemployment office, especially now that I got that promotion and work longer hours."

"I see," Adrian's eyes glanced quickly downwards for a split second, "Well, you never know where he might turn up. I've been exploring every possibility angle of where he might be since I learned he'd helped kill my wife. I had a brief lead last Christmas, but the informant was killed before he could tell me anything crucial--or at least we're 85 percent sure he's dead; still haven't found the body six months after the…"

"Detective Monk," came Disney's voice. The old man was walking briskly toward their table. "I was told you were eating in here," he told the detective, "I was wondering if you…"

"Hold on a minute, you missed a button on your sweater, Mr. Disney," Adrian stood up and buttoned it for him. Disney stared down at it in wonder. "Anyway," he continued, "I was very impressed by what I saw earlier today, detective."

"It's a blessing, and a curse," Adrian shrugged, "Tell me, Mr. Disney, what do you know about Roger Chalmers?"

"Hmm," Disney frowned, "Do you think he had something to do with Andy's murder?"

"Mr. Monk suspects he might have planted the cocaine we found on Mr. Faulk," Natalie told him.

"Well I don't doubt the cocaine was planted," Disney nodded softly, "Andy never shot up a day in his life; his father drugged himself out, and he took great pains to not follow the same example. As for Chalmers, I'm actually not surprised you mention him. I've never trusted the man."

"What about him?" Paul was rather interested in the conversation.

"Well Mr….?"

"Kopecki."

"Mr. Kopecki, I've had a distinct feeling Chalmers has been up to something ever since Eisner brought him onboard fresh out of college three years ago," Disney explained, "Recently, I've had reason that he's been sabotaging construction at the Treasure Planet ride for some reason."

"What kind of sabotage?" Natalie asked.

"Oh, every week or so, crews would arrive in the morning to find track broken, tools missing; little things like that," Disney explained, "Chalmers is the first guy in during the morning and the last guy out at night, so I suspect it was him, but I can't get any proof. And I have reason to suspect he's been embezzling, too. We've experienced major losses in money over the last few months, losses that I feel wouldn't be happening unless someone wasn't stealing."

"So we both suspect he killed Andy Faulk," the touching spaghetti distracted Adrian again. He shut his eyes, trying to ignore it. "Do you think there was a connection between them?"

"Well, what I do know is that Andy scheduled an appointment with Iger and myself next Monday," Disney told him, "He'd been going over the books the last few weeks; I suspect he was going to reveal Chalmers as the embezzler, and Chalmers killed him off to keep it quiet. But I still don't understand how he made Andy fly like he did; we certainly don't have anything here that I know of that can make a dead body do that, and I know this park from top to bottom."

"That still stumps me too, Mr. Disney, but I'm thinking it over," Adrian turned completely around so he wouldn't have to even look at the spaghetti.

"Tell you what, detective, how would you like to have free access to anywhere in the park until you can solve this?" Disney offered, "We can head up to the top of the castle after you're done eating, and you can take a look around."

"Will there be a large crowd up there?" Adrian had to know.

"I don't think there'd be at this hour."

"Then it's fine by me," the detective nodded.

"I'll meet you on the drawbridge in a half hour, then," Disney turned to walk away.

"Oh, two more things, Mr. Disney," Adrian called before he could leave, "First, I speak from the heart here when I ask, could you set up a policy in the future that guests can't have their food touching?"

"Huh?" Disney looked heavily confused.

"Well, it's very distracting, you know," Adrian could see Disney probably wasn't going to meet this demand. "Uh, secondly, when my wife was here last, she left a note wishing for me to find her somewhere in the park. You wouldn't happen to know where it is, would you?"

"Not really no, but if you can solve this for us, I'll do everything in my power to see if I can find it," Disney promised.

"Deal," Adrian nodded. He turned back to his group. "The top of the castle," he told them, a distinct weakness in his voice, "What in God's name was I thinking?"


	4. Parade Problems

"And step up left," Natalie instructed her boss. She and Disney were practically helping him up each individual step to the castle's top room, "And step up right. You know, you can open your eyes, Mr. Monk, there's no windows here for you to look out."

"I don't need the window to know how high up I am," Adrian said between pursed lips of terror. He turned around. "I can't, I can't really do this, I've got to go…"

"Detective, if you're right that Roger Chalmers is a murderer, you're going to have to come up here," Disney told him.

Adrian sighed and turned back up the stairs. Fortunately they were right near the top now. "Mr. Disney, who all has access to this room?" he asked as the man turned a key in the door's lock.

"Only high-level company personnel," Disney told him, "This was intended as a private apartment for my family, but my uncle died before it could be completed. Now it's just an backup storeroom."

"By high-level personnel, does that include Chalmers and Andy Faulk?" Natalie inquired.

"Yes, they both have access keys," Disney stared in wonder as Adrian immediately walked over to a clump of crates and started stacking them in a perfectly straight column. "Much better," he said, stepping back to admire his work, "I should really get a dust rag; it's rather filthy up here."

"Mr. Monk, do you see any evidence or not?" Natalie pressed him.

"Here's the murder weapon," Adrian picked up a large wooden beam in his mechanical arm from behind the crates. There was a noticeable red mark on the end of it. The detective walked slowly around the room—tensing up every time he walked near the open window—making more hand gestures. "Chalmers called Faulk up," he announced, "He told him he was wanted to talk things over with him; maybe he said he was going to admit stealing money. He stood right over here," he walked behind the door and held the beam up to arm's length. "The moment Faulk walked in, he killed him."

"Very impressive," Disney nodded, "Yes, that makes lots of sense. So now how did he fly?"

Adrian glanced around the room. "Was that table always there?" he asked, pointing at one that was lined up lengthwise right against the window.

"Not the last time I was up here," Disney shook his head, staring at it.

"And that was…?"

"Two days ago," the elderly man walked over to the table. "Is this supposed to be a ramp?" he asked, staring at a large wedge of wood arranged at the far end.

"I think so," Adrian glanced it over, "He set Faulk's body here before he launched him."

"And how do suppose he did that?" Disney stared out the window.

Adrian took several steps backwards into the center of the room. "Well, I'm still working on it," the detective said quickly, glancing at the floor, "I'm guessing he controlled Faulk's flight externally; otherwise he couldn't have gone upwards like he did just before he fell…I'm sorry, I'm just too uncomfortable up here; I've got to go down."

"Yes, I'd greatly appreciate that," came Iger's voice. The company president was standing in the doorway, his arms folded across his chest. "Disney, what do you think you're doing bringing him up here?" he demanded to his associate, "I thought we'd agreed this case was closed."

"The case ISN'T closed, Iger," Disney told him firmly, "Detective Monk's raised serious questions about the manner in which Andy died."

"Mr. Iger, where was Roger Chalmers this morning before Mr. Faulk was killed?" Adrian asked him.

Iger didn't answer. He let out a low groan of disgust. "You're not starting this again, Roy," he reprimanded Disney, "I've told you time and time again to lay off Roger!"

"This isn't Mr. Disney's doing," Natalie protested, "We honestly suspect Chalmers of murder."

"Well apart for five measly minutes when he went the bathroom, miss, he was with me all morning," Iger said impatiently. "Honestly, Roy, you never know just when to stop!" he derided Disney, "Every single person Mike hired you assume is the spawn of Satan and try to have axed!"

"Don't drag Mike into this!" Disney shouted back, "He's out of the picture now! And Chalmers is stealing from us. I can't prove it yet, but…"

"I've said it before, and I'll say it yet again," Iger told him off, "I trust Roger with my life. He's a good man. Now lay off him. And you, downstairs," he jerked a finger at Adrian, "This is restricted space up here."

"What will it take for you to believe us?" Natalie demanded.

"Apparently nothing short of people being caught red-handed will suffice for some people," Disney glared at Iger, "Well, folks, I can tell when we're not welcome."

"That's good, that's good, I can live with that right now," Adrian walked quickly toward the stairs. Within minutes he was back down at ground level inside the castle. He breathed a deep sigh of relief. "So now what?" Natalie asked as she and Disney caught up to him.

"Iger said Chalmers was with him all morning," the detective remarked, "He was on the clock when he killed Faulk. Too long of a delay would arouse suspicions. Which means he didn't have time to destroy the incriminating documents."

"Now how do we know Faulk brought the documents, Mr. Monk?"

"There was a lighter lying on the floor near the murder weapon," he explained, "It was cracked; he tried to burn them, but realized he didn't have time, so he threw it up in the air in his haste to leave."

"So he still has the financial documents somewhere," Disney nodded in realization, "Well, we'd better find them if we want to convict him. I'll call sanitation and tell them to search the garbage cans in case he threw them out. Care to come with me?"

"Uh, no, uh, not at all," Adrian grimaced at the thought of garbage. Noticing a young woman drop a napkin nearby, he rushed over to pick it up with his claw. After dumping it into a can, he added, "Sorry, Mr. Disney, garbage isn't…you know…"

"I know," Disney nodded in understanding, "My uncle always said we should be considerate toward people with disabilities."

Adrian flinched at being labeled as disabled. He noticed the Kopeckis waving through the crowd at them—there was no mistaking his rack, which Paul was reluctantly dragging along. "Well, how about we meet back here in two hours?" Disney suggested, noticing them as well, "That way we'll both be able to work both ends of the candle."

"Fine by me," the detective nodded. Anything to avoid rooting through trash. He and Natalie left Disney, who walked briskly into Fantasyland, and rejoined their group near the curb. "You find anything else out, Mom? "Julie asked her.

"Mr. Monk's got a few new theories," Natalie explained everything the detective had brought up to her. "And where did Mr. and Mrs. Kopecki take you?"

"The Haunted Mansion," her daughter told her, "Mr. Monk wouldn't have lasted ten seconds in there. Way too much dust."

"I know," she cast a knowing glance at her boss, who was looking around nervously at the swelling crowds around them. "What's going on?" he asked hesitantly.

"It's almost time for the Pixar Pals Parade," Josh glanced at his watch, "It's supposed to be real good. The map says they invite people in the crowd to come dance with them. Maybe one of us'll get chosen."

"Ah, yeah, that, that would be nice," Adrian commented, shaking from side to side from the growing number of people around them, "I always wondered why no one bothers to have a parade when there's no one around."

Everyone stared at him in wonder. "Here it comes now," Molly pointed up the street. Sure enough, there was no mistaking the green Toy Story soldiers walking in columns up the street, followed by several floats. Loud cheers from excited guests rang out. Adrian started shaking harder; people in costumes made him uncomfortable too. He unlocked suitcase #2 from the rack and began downing the bottle of Sierra Springs he produced like lightning. "Careful, Mr. Monk, you might choke," Natalie cautioned him, "Are you sure you're all right?"

Adrian shook his head. "Parades, parades aren't really my cup of…YIKE!" he leaped backwards as a man in a Mike Wachowski costume danced right at him. "Where do they get those hideous things?" he asked loudly to anyone who cared.

"Don't tell me you never saw Monsters Incorporated?" Josh asked him with raised eyebrows.

"Oh, sure, sure, I saw it about, oh, five, six times, minimum," Adrian said confidently. He then leaned close to Paul and whispered, "That's the one where the guys run around with the proton packs and shoot the disgusting green thing, right?"

Before Paul could answer, Sully abruptly pulled out the detective into the street. "What?" he gasped loudly in terror as the large blue monster started dancing around with him to the strains of "You've Got a Friend in Me," "What the…? NATALIE, HEEELLLLLLLLLLPPP! Call the National Guard!"

Natalie was too busy laughing at his predicament to do anything. She raised her camera and took a picture of him with the monster. Adrian wrenched his way loose from Sully's grasp….and then noticed the Cars float moving right toward him…and that a Luigi robot driving alongside was zooming straight at him at almost twenty miles an hour. "Oh great!" he yelled, and took off running down Main Street. Luigi remained hot on his heels, almost as if he was subliminally attracted to the detective. Adrian weaved blindly at top speed through various Pixar floats and parade marchers. "Help me!" he shouted to a man dressed as Mr. Incredible, "You're supposed to be a superhero, save me!"

"Whoa!" Mr. Incredible took one look at the runaway Luigi and dove for the safety of the Incredibles float. Adrian continued running as fast as he could. He spotted a fire escape along the side of the ice cream house out of the corner of his eyes. Pushing his way through a laughing crowd, he leaped for the ladder, grabbed on, and climbed up as fast as he could. Luigi hit the wall below him and stopped. Adrian breathed a large sigh of relief…until he realized he was stranded up in the air. "HEELLLLLLLLPPP!" he yelled at the top of his lungs, "Somebody get me down!"


	5. Threats

"A little bit more to the left," the Anaheim fire chief called down to his men operating the fire truck ladder. He was maneuvered slowly over to the fire escape, where Adrian was still clinging hard with his eyes shut. "It's OK, pal, we're here now," the fire chief told the detective, "We'll get you down."

"Carry me," Adrian asked him.

"What?"

"Would you carry me down?"

The fire chief rolled his eyes and yanked the detective off the fire escape. "Lower her down," he called to his men. Adrian seized hold of the ladder railing and held on tight until the ladder was in its fully lowered position. Loud cheers came from the throngs of people that had gathered to watch his impromptu rescue. Kight helped the detective down from the fire truck. "Thanks for coming, chief," he told him.

"Well, thirty-five years in the business, you've got to be prepared for everything," the fire chief said, staring at the detective in wonder as he started scrubbing dirt smudges off the side of the fire truck.

"Come on detective, your group's been worried," Kight led him back in through the front gate.

"Do you have a decontamination chamber?" Adrian asked him weakly, "That big blue thing, it attacked me, I need to be decontaminated.

"Decontamination chamber?" Kight was thoroughly puzzled, "Now why would we have something like that?"

"And you call yourself a family park?" Adrian half-screamed at him. Kight opened his mouth to say something, but apparently decided against it. "Anyway, Mr. Disney told me to tell you that he hasn't found any financial documents just yet," Kight informed him, stopping for a minute while the detective deposited several discarded napkins lying in the street in a receptacle, "He's going to keep looking though."

"That's, that's all you can ask for," Adrian remarked. They approached the Kopeckis on a bench near the firehouse. "You OK, detective?" Paul asked him, concerned.

"Oh sure, Paul, never better, in fact," Adrian nodded quickly, "That guy," he pointed at the wrecked Luigi still up against the wall near the fire escape, "He's relentless. And actually, he sort of looks like me a strange, automotive sort of way."

"Well Natalie's in the gift shop over there," Sandy pointed to it, "We're going to go our separate ways for a little while and meet up for dinner, if that's fine with you."

"That'll do fine, I hope you can have fun," Adrian told them. He weaved his way through the dishearteningly large crowds toward the gift shop in question, stopping briefly to produce a nail file and scratch at one of the horse head-shaped hitching posts along the sidewalk of Main Street. As he was about to enter the store, he noticed something stuck in the crack between the gift shop and the firehouse's walls. Something that looked like an old piece of paper. His heart pounding, he held up his claw and tried to snare it.

"Mr. Monk, now what are you doing?" Natalie stuck her head out the gift shop's door. Adrian held up his hand as he grabbed a hold of the paper. Ever so slowly he withdrew it from its crevice. When it was out, he grabbed it and hastily unwrapped it. His expression promptly sagged. "It's not Trudy's note, right?" Natalie could read his disappointment.

Adrian held up the paper to her face, revealing it was little more than an old map. "Well, there's still a whole day ahead, it might show up later," his assistant tried to cheer him up, "Come on in, Mr. Monk; you might find something you like in here."

"I highly doubt it," Adrian shook his head, but he followed her in anyway after dumping the map into another receptacle. He promptly strode over to a display of plush Pooh characters and began arranging them in straight lines by character. "Excuse me, excuse me, what are you doing?" demanded the clerk nearby, seeing the detective's handiwork.

"It looks better like this, Anthony, trust me," Adrian told him after a brief glance at the clerk's nametag. He quickly counted over his work. "Piglet, Tigger, Pooh, Rabbit, Eeyore, Owl. Yes, that's good and color coordinated. Anthony, did you happen to know Andy Faulk?"

In fact I knew him quite well," the clerk lowered his head, "He would come in here whenever he could and congratulate us all on good sales whenever it was a busy day. I'm going to miss him."

"Apparently a lot of people are," Adrian walked over to another shelf, where books on the park's history were arranged in a sideways pyramid of sorts, with three books in the back row, two in the middle, and a single one in the front. The detective rearranged them so they were in rows of two each. "Did you happen to see Roger Chalmers this morning."

"Of course I did," the clerk strode over and returned the books to their original format with great zeal, as if the world would end if he didn't, "He's always in here when I get in."

"How about just before Faulk died, did you happen to see where he was?" Adrian put the books back in the positioning he preferred.

"He was going in the bathroom over there," the clerk pointed out the window while putting the books back in their original format again, "I was setting those Disney Monopoly boards in the window up. Now I wasn't looking directly at him, but I could swear out of the corner of my eye that I saw him jump right back out and sneak into that service entrance right next to it."

"Service entrance?" Adrian's looked quite interested as he once again lined the books up in twos.

"This whole park is serviced by underground tunnels, Mr. Monk," Natalie had been listening in, "They have the costume department and ride controls down there."

"That's very interesting," Adrian remarked, light coming into his eyes, "Very, very interesting. If he had only five minutes and needed to get up to the castle quickly without being noticed, it would be easy to…what in God's name are you doing?"

The clerk was rearranging the books again. Adrian seized the one he was holding. The two of them engaged in a minor tug of war with it. "What am I doing?" the clerk sounded upset that he would pose a question like that, "What do you think YOU'RE doing, buddy?"

"How can you live with yourself setting them up like this?" Adrian pointed hysterically at the pyramid shaped the rest of the books were now in again, "This is so uneven it's almost criminal! You're going to offend people setting it up like that!"

"I have a system!" the clerk bellowed, "Everything has to fall under it! And you're ruining it by setting everything up like this!"

Natalie stared back and forth between the two of them incredulously. "Are you two long-lost brothers?" she had to ask.

"Detective Monk," came the sudden voice of Roger Chalmers from behind them. The executive was standing with his arms folded across his chest. "Can I have a minute alone with the man, Anthony?" he told the clerk.

"Certainly," the clerk scuttled off. Chalmers advanced slowly toward the detective. "Word has it you've been asking a lot of questions about me, detective," he told him.

"Well, maybe if I got an answer now, I won't need to ask anymore," Adrian responded, "How exactly did you make Andy Faulk fly like he did after you killed him?"

Chalmers chucked darkly. "Apparently, Detective, you don't realize who you're talking to here," he said, extending an accusing arm toward Adrian, "I happen to be the number two man in one of the largest media conglomerates in the world. I happen to have risen from mere technical engineer in Santa Barbara Consolidated to the boardroom of this company through sheer determination. I happen to be the man that Robert Iger trusts more than any other."

"He told me as much," Adrian didn't sound fazed, "Really, I've seen people like you before, Mr. Chalmers. They all believe that having wealth and power gives them to the right to get away with anything, including murder."

"I should tell you, Detective, that I am not a man you should try to cross," Chalmers warned him, "Otherwise it may cost you dearly."

"Is that supposed to be a threat?" Natalie demanded.

"All I'm saying, miss," Chalmers pointed his other finger at her, "Is that this happens to be an amusement park. Accidents can very easily happen here."

"You do realize of course," Adrian said with a slight shudder at the threat, "That any 'accident,' as you term it, Mr. Chalmers, wouldn't just hurt us. It would hurt dozens of innocent people who just came here to try and enjoy themselves. And no jury in this state would ever let someone who knowingly hurts dozens of innocent people ever see the light of day."

"The fact, Detective," Chalmers sounded dismissive, "Is that there's no way on this world you can prove I had anything to do with Faulk's death. Now if I were you, I'd just drop this whole thing completely. Unless of course you want to see exactly what a Disneyland accident looks like."

He turned and walked out the door before either of them could respond to this latest threat. "Is something wrong, Mom," a concerned Julie came walking up.

"Uh, no, nothing, nothing at all, honey," Natalie said quickly, but she still found it necessary to put a reassuring arm around her daughter, "Did you see anything you liked?"

"Everything's way too expensive in here," Julie looked disappointed, "You can't find anything for under thirty dollars."

"Well, maybe one of the other stores has something at more of a bargain," Natalie tried to reassure her. She turned back to Adrian. "I told Julie I'd take her on Splash Mountain while you were stranded, Mr. Monk. Since you'd get a seizure just looking at it, why don't you go meet up with Mr. Disney again? It's almost the time you agreed on."

"Alone?" Adrian looked very nervous, "You're leaving me alone amid millions of other people, many of whom may well have ebola or diphtheria or God knows what else? And what if the line to that…ride is too long? What if you're in there for hours?"

"Well, just try to have fun as best you can," his assistant told him.

"Fun?" Adrian's expression dropped further, "Natalie, you know I can't possibly have fun. It's not in my genetic makeup."

Natalie was already on the way out with Julie. "Don't say I didn't warn you!" the detective called after her. Sighing, he glanced around to make sure no one was watching before striding back over to the shelf to rearrange the books again. In a flash the clerk charged out of nowhere and grappled with him for the books. "Are you crazy?" the man roared, "Out!"

He jerked a finger toward the door. "You'd better be good at your job!" Adrian yelled at him as he walked out, "Because when I meet Mr. Disney again, I'm filing a complaint for wrongful business practices! Leaving books like this is just asking for someone to speak out!"


	6. Monkbo the Flying Detective

"I just can't fire a guy for stacking merchandise like that, Detective," Disney told Adrian. They were standing by the door to the underground catacombs, being jostled by a myriad of people going into the bathroom next to it, "Besides, Anthony's been a hard-working employee here for almost a decade."

"Can't, can't you at least give him an informal reprimand?" Adrian proposed.

"So Detective, you said Chalmers came back this way?" Kight inquired him.

"He was in a five minute window," Adrian glanced up Main Street to the platform the executives had all been standing around when he'd entered the park, "Judging by the crowd volume at the time, he'd be down here in about thirty-three seconds. Does either of you have a second hand watch?"

"I do," Kight held up his.

"Start the clock; we've got four minutes and twenty-seven seconds left," Adrian nodded to Disney, who slipped a card key into the door's lock. Opening it, he waved the detective in. Adrian jogged at a brisk pace down the stairs to the underground halls, his rack clattering down the steps behind him. "Castle this way," he noted a sign on the wall and turned right, "He was running fast but not too fast on his way to kill Faulk, but he ran hard coming back."

"And you know this because….?" Disney was huffing to keep up with the detective.

"He had two distinct layers of sweat on his forehead when I saw him around Faulk's body," Adrian called over his shoulder, "One dryer layer on the inside, and one thicker, wetter layer on the outside. He'd barely had time to catch his breath before he…WHOA BOY!"

He recoiled as he bumped into a performer wearing a Brer Fox costume that had appeared around the corner out of nowhere. The detective pressed himself against the wall, an unhappy look on his face, until Brer Fox had passed. "You OK there?" Kight asked him, clutching a stitch in his side from the jogging.

"I'm, I'm not terribly good with guys in big costumes, Mr. Kight," the detective informed him, "Not a top 10er, but it's, it's pretty bad, right between glaciers and moss, I think…ACKK!"

More characters in costume were pushing him aside. "What is this supposed to be?" Adrian shouted out loud as Cogsworth brushed by him.

"Why don't we press on?" Disney led his associate past the characters, "As you said, we're still on the clock here."

"Right, Chalmers would be at three minutes and fifty-seven seconds now," Adrian jogged further down the corridor…only to stop and stare in wonder into a room on the right side. "What now?" Kight pulled up alongside him.

"Look at it," Adrian pointed in awe into the costume department, with numerous costumes set up in perfect order on moveable racks as far as the eye could, "It's a dream! It's absolutely immaculate! Everything's labeled and ordered. You can't possibly forget where anything is. I could live here if…."

"Detective, the case," Disney pressed him with just a hint of impatience in his voice.

"Right," Adrian snapped out of it and continued his run. "You know," he told the men, "If you were to ever open a park in San Francisco, and I'm no longer consulting, I'd love to work in the costume department—even though I don't like people in costumes—it would….hello, what's this?"

He'd stopped again. A large crumpled-up piece of paper lay behind a trash receptacle to the left near the stairs leading up into the castle. Adrian picked it up with his claw. "How often is the trash pick up down here?" he asked, holding it toward Disney.

"It wouldn't be for another three hours down here," Disney unfolded it, "We take out the trash more sparingly down here than up there. Yep, this is Roger's handwriting. But I can't make out any this. What do you think of it, Detective?"

Adrian was already dashing up the stairs into the castle. He pushed down on the door handle with his forearm and emerged right at the bottom of the steps leading up to the tower in which Faulk had been killed. "How are we, Mr. Kight?" he called down as the head of the amusement park division staggered up to meet him, gasping.

"Counting those briefs stops you took, three minutes and two seconds," Kight informed him, holding the watch in his face.

"So Chalmers got through that fairly quickly; I'm guessing there was no traffic," Adrian jumped up the steps two at a time to the top room. He was starting to tire himself. "I don't get why he didn't just lay down after he killed him, running like this. But here we are."

He stumbled into the room, the door having been left open from the last time they were in there. "And so he got into position here," he told Disney and Kight once they joined him, getting into Chalmers's position behind the door, "It mustn't have taken too much longer before Faulk walked up, no more than forty seconds. They probably agreed on meeting at a specific time. Chalmers knew he was down to just two minutes after he killed him. He only had enough time to set up Faulk to fly and make a single quick attempt to burn the documents before he had to go back with the rest of the executives."

He was breathing hard when I saw him again after he left," Kight remembered, "I thought it was a little strange. This explains a lot."

"So what does this mean then?" Disney held up the paper Adrian had found for him to analyze. Adrian examined it closely. It looks like a blueprint for what he did with Faulk's body," he mused, "It's clear these drawing are supposed to be the castle here and the Treasure Planet ride here."

"What are these numbers supposed to mean?" Kight pointed at them.

"This is the distance between the castle and the ride," Adrian gestured at the number 507 next to an arcing line between the two buildings, "And 295 here (which was written at the top of another line drawn from the ground to what had been Faulk's zenith in the sky) is the height he needed the body to go to. He had to figure out the exact distance for his plan to work perfectly. This paper was his reference."

"How about this number, 1,787?" Disney pointed to the number written right by the castle window, "I'm not sure how this would fit in."

"Hmm," Adrian frowned at it, "If we knew exactly how he made Faulk fly, I could probably tell you, but there's no evidence of anything yet. I think we can rule out an internal combustion engine, though; there was no roar and no exhaust."

"It's certainly not wires, either," Disney glanced out the window, "There's no rigging out here. But then what could he have used?"

"I'm still working on it," Adrian was beginning to freeze up again from being in the air, "And, and could, could you not lean out the window like that? We are pretty far up, you know."

"Well, we'll have to keep looking for those documents, then," Kight shrugged as they walked back downstairs, "Maybe he's hidden the means of propulsion with them."

"I doubt it," Adrian shook his head, "He had the means of propulsion destroyed by Faulk's fall. He wouldn't have had enough time when the body landed to retrieve it without being seen, so he had to destroy it in the fall."

"Well, you've been doing a fine job, if I may say so, Detective," Disney commended him, "I think the answer's right in front of us if we just look hard enough. How about we meet up again after dinner and see if we can seal the bag on Roger?"

"Uh, that's fine, but I'd rather not be alone right now," Adrian said. He told them about Chalmers's threat of an accident if they didn't drop the case. "Dear me," Disney cringed, "And with his technical background, he's just the man to cause an accident. Where's the rest of your group right now?"

Adrian related to him the Teegers' and Kopeckis' current whereabouts. "I'd better check personally to make sure they're all right," the old man said, starting to walk off toward the Frontierland branch at the Hub now that they were outside, "Tim, you stay with Detective Monk and make sure nothing happens to him while I'm gone."

"And what am I supposed to do?" Adrian called after him.

"How about you go on some rides that are open and can't be rigged?" Kight suggested, "I'll keep a watch out."

"And what could I possibly ride?" Adrian protested, "I've seen most of the things here; they're all for daredevils."

"How about Dumbo? That's nice and calm," Kight pointed the ride, just visible from their vantage point inside the castle. Adrian gulped at the sight of it. "That, that goes up in the air, there's a definite no," he said quickly.

"Well there's a bar on the inside you can push in to make it stay down if you want," Kight told him.

"Oh, well, in that case, I may escape with my life," Adrian perked up. He cautiously walked into Fantasyland toward the ride. "Like Mr. Disney said, we appreciate what you're doing to help us," Kight told him, "If there's anything we can do for you in return, please name it."

"Anything?" Adrian remarked.

"Yes."

"Well," Adrian thought long and hard, "I've heard you're planning on starting one of those law enforcement type shows on ABC this fall. If, if it's not too much of a hassle, I wouldn't mind if you profiled my wife's murder on one of the shows. I figure, if the whole country gets to help out, maybe, just maybe, we can finally bring whoever killed her to justice."

"Yeah, I've heard about what happened," Kight shook his head, "I know just what you're going through. About six years ago my oldest son was killed in a hit-and-run near the baseball field. They still haven't found the guy yet. It's heartbreaking, it really is. You feel like you've failed the person you swore to yourself you'd never let down."

"Exactly," Adrian nodded. He'd felt often that he was failing Trudy every day her case went unsolved. "Well, the one thing you can do, Mr. Kight, is still be the man your son loved. That's all you can ask for, really."

"I'll keep that in mind," Kight nodded. They'd reach the Dumbo ride. Adrian was still a bit unnerved at the sight of the elephant cars sailing around high in the air. He took deep breaths and reassured himself mentally that he didn't have to go up. He dug wipes out of their own briefcase before locking the rack to the fence again. Slowly the line moved forward. "One passenger?" the operator inquired when he reached the front of the line.

"As far as I know," the detective admitted.

"Due to excess capacity we'll have to team you up with someone else," the operator informed him. Before Adrian could protest that teaming up was not something he'd ordinarily do, he was led to the blue-hatted Dumbo, where a young boy was already seated. "What are you doing?" he asked suspiciously as the detective wiped down the safety bar and then the lift bar.

"Making sure the two of us don't get killed on this thing," Adrian said, polishing off the lift bar. Satisfied it was germ-free, he pushed it in as far as it could go as the ride started moving.

"I don't want to stay on the ground!" the boy protested, "I came on this to see the whole park!" He grabbed the bar and yanked it forward. The elephant started rising upward into the afternoon sun.

"Why see it all here?" Adrian whimpered in protest, pushing the bar back again, "There's plenty of….high places to see the whole park here. I think we'll be safer down near the ground."

"And this is one place I want to see the whole park!" the boy pulled the bar forward again.

"Well some of us aren't too keen on that, so if you kindly wouldn't mind!" Adrian pushed it back in again.

"Yes, I do mind!" the boy pulled it back out again. The two of them engaged in a heated battle for the bar that caused their Dumbo car to noticeably jerk up and down. Onlookers alternately stared in shock at the sight before them or burst into laughter. Near the front of the ride, the operator had his hands over his face. "Is he crazy?" he asked a bystanding Kight.

"No," Kight stared in wonder at the battle in the air, "But I think it's clear now why Detective Monk's never had a day of fun in his whole life."


	7. Ride Trouble

Adrian paced around in circles on the bridge over Splash Mountain's big drop, waiting for the Teegers to get off the ride. He wasn't alone—and not just because the crowds were everywhere. Barry, a large hulking guard who'd been assigned by Disney to make sure nothing happened to him, stood nearby with his arms folded across his chest. Adrian didn't like the way the man was staring at him so expressionlessly, but he considered Barry's presence a necessary evil.

"So, you been here long?" he asked the guard tentatively. Barry stared straight ahead, without even making an acknowledgement that he'd been addressed. Adrian shrugged and took a sip of Sierra Springs. "I guess you didn't know my wife, Trudy Ellison?" he pressed onward, "Most people here don't seem to. Funny, it wasn't that long ago that she was last here."

There was still no response from Barry. The sound of loud cheers caught Adrian's attention now. His gaze turned to the north. "Ah, Big Thunder Mountain Railroad," he remarked at the sight of the roller coaster, "Now that was Trudy's favorite ride. She'd go on it at least three times whenever she came here. Sometimes when she wasn't riding, she'd sit on one of the rocks there and just watch…"

He stopped abruptly. His eyes lit up. "You don't suppose…?" he remarked with just a tinge of excitement, "Maybe she left it…"

Before he could finish, however, there was a loud splash behind him as one of the log flumes fell down the drop. The next thing the detective knew, a cascade of water came splashing down on him. He yelped in discomfort and frantically started digging through briefcase number six for more paper towels.

"Mr. Monk, what's going on?" Natalie had appeared out of the crowd.

"Got to dry off!" Adrian whimpered out loud, wiping away at his suit with an entire roll of paper towels (it didn't matter, as he still had at least seven more backup rolls in the briefcase). Bystanders laughed at him, causing him to hunch over the railing.

"Mr. Monk, it's OK," Natalie took the roll out of his hands, "I'm sure the sun can get it dried."

"I'd like to make sure though," Adrian responded.

"Miss," Barry spoke for the first time, "I'll be standing watch for the rest of the day with you to ensure nothing goes wrong. Mr. Disney's orders."

"He speaks?" Adrian stared at him in wonder.

"Does that mean no more rides?" Julie looked disappointed.

"No, but we'll have to check to make sure they haven't been tampered with beforehand," Barry informed her.

"Better safe than sorry, he figures; Natalie, this way," Adrian weaved his way through the crowds toward big Thunder Mountain Railroad. "What, you want to go on THAT?" Natalie stared at the roller coaster in shock, "Forgive me, Mr. Monk, but have you been drinking?"

"No, and I couldn't be; they don't serve alcohol here; now which one was it?" Adrian was climbing up on the rocks surrounding the outermost track. "One of these was Trudy's rock," he told his surprised onlookers, "I wonder if she might have slipped the paper underneath one of them during….hello, what's this?"

Something inorganic was barely visible underneath one of the rocks. It looked very much like a faded piece of paper. Adrian scratched at the dirt around it with his claw until it was more visible. "Barry, a hand please?" he asked the guard.

"Why?" Barry asked in a monotone, uninterested voice.

"Because it's been in the ground for a long time, in the dirt, and I'm, well, me," the detective informed him. Barry shrugged and pulled it out from under the rock. He unfolded it and held it up. "Ah, the boss has been looking for this for a while," he remarked slowly.

Adrian stared at the paper with eagerness—that quickly faded. For he'd found little more than faded ride blueprints. "We can put this in the museum's exhibit of ride designs," the guard went on, "this'll enhance the display."

Adrian shook his head and trudged off in the general direction of Fantasyland. "So what, Mr. Monk," Natalie caught up to him, "I'm sure it's still…"

"Why bother?" he boss said slowly, "It's probably been destroyed by nature already. It's like climbing the Matterhorn—no offense," he pointed to the peak in the distance, "So where do we go now?"

* * *

"I don't want to wear them!" Molly protested.

"But this is a dangerous, wild ride, and I think we'd all like to be safe," Adrian told her.

"We drive a car around a track!" Josh pointed up at the Autopia sign now directly above them in line, "What could be dangerous about that?"

"Loads of things, believe me."

"Like?"

"Well, I don't have the entire list with me—left it at home by accident—but trust me, there's a lot that can go wrong," Adrian informed him. He reached into one of his briefcases and withdrew several crash helmets and shoulder pads. He put on a set of his own—to much derision by other people in line near him, who started laughing—and then extended several other pairs to the children (he'd been entrusted to take them on the Autopia while the other adults had gone to get a drink, although Natalie had her reservations). They recoiled away from his safety equipment. "Mr. Monk, we're not four years old," Julie told him firmly.

"Neither am I, but I'm not complaining," Adrian said in what passed for authoritativeness with him, "How, how about I give you each a hundred dollars if you put them on?"

"Just this once?" Molly raised her eyebrows.

"Cross my heart."

"Give us your address, then," Josh pulled out his autograph book and pen and pushed it into the detective's hands, "Just to make sure you follow through."

"Oh, don't you worry, I always follow through," Adrian said, filling out his address and phone number. The children—still reluctantly—put on his safety equipment. Within minutes they'd reached the front of the line. "Not, not quite yet, I still have take care of a few things before we launch," Adrian informed the person in line. He dug some more wipes out of a briefcase and proceeded to cleanse the steering wheel and accelerator. It took him four minutes, during which time the people behind him in line started grumbling loud enough to be heard, until he was completely satisfied it was germ-free. He climbed behind the wheel and tapped the pedal about a lightly as a person could. "Here, here we go," he remarked as they drove off onto the track—at about two miles an hour, "now this, this is what I call fun."

"Um, you may want to consider going just a little faster, Mr. Monk?" Julie pressed him, looking rather embarrassed at their slow pace.

"I guess I could, but that would be reckless endangerment," Adrian remarked. He was gripping wheels tight enough to crush it with both hands, "I wish they put airbags on these things, we're just asking for…"

"Hey buddy, you think you're going fast enough?" yelled the driver of the car directly behind him, who was right against the detective's rear bumper.

"Move it pal!" yelled another woman further back. A growing line of cars was forming behind Adrian's car, and the angry shouts were multiplying. "Keep your pants on!" Adrian yelled back at all of them, "This is not Daytona, people! We're trying to stay safe here!"

He eased his way carefully—perhaps too carefully—around a turn. "So I'm wondering," he asked the children, "What do you think Chalmers meant when he wrote the number 1,787 on the paper? I think that's the key to this whole mystery."

"How am I supposed to know?" Molly had her hand over her face.

"Don't, don't be too scared," Adrian misinterpreted her, "I'll slow up for you."

"If you slow up we'll be stopped!" Josh pointed out, but that didn't stop Adrian from practically taking his foot off the accelerator completely. Their car eased to a near stop in the middle of the track. At least eighteen cars that were now backed up behind him braked to a stop themselves. More angry shouts from the people driving them rose into the air. "Honestly, have you all got death wishes?" Adrian demanded at them, "I'll only go as fast as I safely can!"

And thus, it was an incredible twenty-five minutes later that the detective finally eased the car back into the station. Loud cheers rose up from the people behind him when he got out of the car. A rather impatient-looking Natalie was waiting for him by the exit. "So, do you think you were safe enough driving that car, Mr. Monk?" she had to ask him.

"I did good, I think I did good," Adrian naively remarked, fiddling with his collar for no apparent reason, "We all came back in one piece, that's all that matters. Boy, that's really a wild ride."

"At least there was no way I could lose you like that," Barry remarked, looking quite surprised himself that Adrian had driven that slowly.

"I'll expect you to pay up still," Josh informed the detective, "I'm keeping your address with me until I get the money."

"Right, right," Adrian remarked, "So, where to now?"

"Anywhere as long as you don't get to control the ride," Julie informed him. Seeing this made the detective's face sag, she qquickly added, "I don't mean that the wrong way, Mr. Monk, it's just…"

"I know, I know," his expression remained downtrodden, "I'm no fun to be around, I know."

"Now I wouldn't say that, Mr. Monk," Natalie tried to cheer him up.

"Well, what would you say?"

"Well…I don't know, but it wouldn't be in those exact words," she said, "How about Pirates of the Caribbean next? That should be fairly tame."

"I don't know," Adrian's face scrunched, "I, I don't do good with drops, I know it has drops."

* * *

"Something's not right here," the directive was fretting in the Pirates of the Caribbean line about an hour later. The ride had been shut down for "maintenance," since they'd gotten in line, but several park employees in costume had reassured everyone ahead of them that things would be moving against very shortly.

"Are you always paranoid about these things?" Sandy was starting to look worn-out by Adrian's mannerisms by now, "You haven't let up since we got in line."

"It's the drops, I can't just ignore the drops!" he half-screamed, "I get nervous just thinking about drops! And there's something that just doesn't fit here. And I can't figure out what 1,787 means. That's the key to…"

"We know, we know," everyone muttered out loud, "It's the key to this whole mystery!"

"Good, you're all catching on," Adrian remarked, apparently not noticing everyone rolling their eyes. It was at this moment that the CLOSED FOR MAINTENANCE sign at the front of the line was removed to cheering by patrons. Slowly it inched forward until Adrian's party was at the front. Immediately the detective held up his hand to the man at the launch. He produced more paper towels and wiped down the seats of the ride boat. The man stared at him in wonder. "Wait, wait, don't get in like that!" he protested as the Kopeckis got into the boat, "You're not even like that!"

"What?" Paul stared at him in wonder.

"It should be short front, tall back, that would be even," Adrian pointed out. Sighing, the children got in the front seat. Adrian sat down with the other adults in the back. For all of five seconds. "Wait, wait, this, this still isn't right," he started to say, "We'd better switch back…"

The man at the dock, looking quite frustrated, abruptly pushed his lap bar down into the locked position, leaving him stuck in the back seat. "Or maybe not,' he said quickly. He turned around briefly to wave goodbye to Barry at the dock, then gripped onto the lap bar for all it was worth. "We're not going down the drop yet," Sandy informed him, more weariness showing through her voice.

"I'd, I'd like to be prepared for when we do reach it," Adrian told her. He felt guilty when he saw the fed-up look on her face. Indeed, everyone in his party looked fed-up. He lowered his head in shame. If there was one thing he hated, it was hurting the people close to him—or the people they cared for.

"_I'll just not say anything anymore_," he thought to himself, "_I'll try and hold any more complaints in and try and be as close to normal as I can_."

Thus, when the first drop came upon them, as much as he felt like screaming in terror, he strained hard and managed to keep his composure. "Well, that was quite fun," he remarked out loud, "That's, that's really--normal."

"It's what?" Natalie stared at him in wonder, "Are you sure you haven't been drinking, Mr. Monk?"

"Oh sure, this is, this is good, this is great, I've never had so much fun before in my life," Adrian continued, apparently not realizing his voice sounded completely phony, "I mean look at those skeletons over there," he pointed across the attention at the bony figure piloting a ship, "Isn't watching death great. I can't wait for the next drop, it'll be fun."

Natalie put a hand to his forehead. "Maybe it's a sunstroke without heat," she mused out loud as they plummeted down the second drop and found themselves going underneath the "cannon fire" bombarding the fort, "Maybe you're…"

Suddenly all the lights went out in the building, and the ride lurched to a sudden stop. "Now what?" Sandy groaned out loud, "Didn't they fix the ride?"

"Ow, who's squeezing my hand?" Paul demanded.

"Me," Adrian said softly in spite of his feelings. He wanted to add that he wanted Paul to hold him, but he had a gut feeling that would be asking for too much at the moment.

And then it hit him. "Natalie?" he asked through the darkness.

"Yes?"

"Before we launched, I saw Roger Chalmers walking out a door on the side of the building. He had a dark smile on his face."

It was at that exact moment that an unmistakably real cannon shot burst out from one of the ship's cannons into the fort, which to the horror of everyone present burst into flames. Within seconds the entire section of the building around them was a massive fireball. While Natalie and Kopeckis frantically smothered their children from the flames, Adrian sat back in his seat blankly. He didn't know what Chalmers had done to try and kill them, but at least in heaven he couldn't bother anyone…


	8. Tough Times

Miles away in San Francisco, Lieutenant Randall Disher sat at his desk inside the precinct station Adrian most frequently consulted at, staring intently at the screen of his private television set. "…and with two outs here in the bottom of the fifth, Scott Gregorio steps up to the plate, hoping to add to his home run tally for the year," the announcer was saying.

"You know, I think he's back to normal now," another cop added, glancing over Disher's shoulder, "This year he just might break that record."

"Well, you can thank us for helping him there," Disher said confidently, "Well, mostly Monk, but we assisted. Fastball, right corner."

"So you're calling pitches now," the other cop seemed amused.

"Five years in Little League, my friend, I can tell what's coming every time," Disher told his associate confidently. The pitcher's toss, however, was high and very much outside. "You were saying?" the cop asked, eyebrows raised.

"Uh, well, maybe it was only six months," Disher admitted.

The door to the precinct opened very hard. A very depressed looking Captain Leland Stottlemeyer trudged in, his head hung low. He walked very slowly toward his office. "Oh boy," Disher grimaced at his superior's appearance, "This isn't good. Uh, Schiller, hide the set, I'd better see if he's all right."

The other cop shrugged and put the still-turned on set underneath Disher's desk. Disher hesitantly approached Stottlemeyer's office and knocked on the door. "Is it OK to come in, sir?" he asked softly.

There was no response from inside, which was Disher's cue to softly enter the room. Stottlemeyer was seated in his chair, staring sadly at "the magic dream catcher," as he termed it, in his palms. "So, um, how'd it go this morning?" the lieutenant asked as innocently as he could.

"Lieutenant, do me one favor," Stottlemeyer said very softly, "The next time you check through the files, if you see Max Tepperman's name anywhere, book him and book him good."

"That bad, huh?" Disher grimaced.

The captain jumped to his feet abruptly, unable to keep the tears from flowing down his face. "This morning, that guy had the nerve to stand up and tell that judge that I was a raging animal, a threat to everyone around me," he said between gritted teeth, hurt in his every word, "He told the court that leaving me around my children for any length of time would be endangering them."

He sank back down again and buried his face in his hands. "Now, for the boys' sake, I'm not going to press why it had to come to this," he confided in his associate, "I'm just going to assume he just came up with it on the spur of the moment and didn't consult with Karen before saying it, because he sees handling this case as a way to get glory for himself by bringing down a cop. I'll just hurt them if I do anything that might look like I'm dragging her through the mud, and that's the last thing I'd ever want to do."

"Well, if you need any help, I'll tell them you're still getting therapy every day and you haven't hit anyone since the incidents," Disher told him, "In fact, I'll even tell them that you haven't even blown your stack since the four times Monk aggravated you last week and you threatened to shoot him if he didn't stop."

Stottlemeyer stared at him incredulously. "Gee thanks, that's really going to help me in these custody hearings, Randy, thanks a lot," he muttered sarcastically.

"Anything to help, sir," Disher naively responded.

Stottlemeyer groaned and slumped his head on the desk. "I never thought things could get this bad," he lamented out loud, the tears coming back, "I've conceded all I could through these divorce hearings to Karen, and now I get the impression she wants to shut my out of our kids' lives. Yeah, I have problems, I'm willing to admit that now even if it's too late, but I'm still dealing with them. I'm still going to therapy every week, aren't I Lieutenant?"

"Of course sir."

"I swear, if that legal loser has a restraining order put on me, if I can't see them on a regular basis, I don't know what I'll do. I might want…" Stottlemeyer couldn't finish his thoughts without breaking up, but Disher understood what he meant. "Please don't think like that, sir, I'm sure it won't come to that," he told him. Privately, though, he was concerned; in the few hearings he had attended, things hadn't been going Stottlemeyer's way at all. "So, anyway, I've got a lead in that car theft case," he said as optimistically as he could, handing his boss a form for a search warrant, "All I need is a signature there to go check if the suspect's hoarding them on his property."

"Good work," Stottlemeyer signed the form half-heartedly, "Now I'd rather like to be alone at the moment, Lieutenant."

"Understood sir," Disher picked up the form. "You know sir, if you're not doing anything tonight, we could stop by my place and watch them open the Treasure Planet ride at Disney tonight on ABC," he remarked.

"Now why would I want to sit around and watch that, Randy?" Stottlemeyer looked at him with a bizarre expression.

"Well, maybe it'll cheer you up," Disher suggested helpfully, "And you never know, maybe we'll see Monk."

"Oh yeah, I almost forgot he's down there this week," Stottlemeyer's expression lightened a little, "I wonder how he's holding up down there among thousands of people?"

* * *

The hiss of fire extinguishers filled the ride. Adrian had been going unconscious from the smoke and was thus barely able to here the sound of loud footsteps running toward his boat. "Quick, get some air for these people!" someone shouted.

The lap bar was pushed away. Adrian felt an oxygen mask being pushed over his face. "Did you sterilize it?" he muttered weakly.

"Come along with us, sir, everything's going to be OK," the man dragged the detective out of the boat and up a set of stairs. By the time Adrian's head cleared, he was back outside in the queue. A worried crowd had gathered outside the Pirates of the Caribbean building, watching the firefighting crews battle the blaze, which could still be seen burning from the detective's vantage point. From out of the throngs a very worried-looking Disney quickly appeared. "Detective, what happened?" he asked in a hyper voice.

"Chalmers rigged the cannon system to blow," Adrian said between coughs, "Try to kill me."

"I thought I told you to watch him!" Disney scolded a guilty-looking Barry off to the side.

"Sorry sir," Barry stammered, "I didn't think…!"

"It's OK there, Mr. Disney, there was no way he could have known what would have happened," Adrian told the old man. He was relieved to see the Teegers and Kopeckis now being led out of the building under their own power.

"Move, people, move!" a frantic Iger shoved his ways through the crowds toward the ride. "Oh great!" he groaned at the sight of the still-smoldering building, "This is just what I need right before a national on-location broadcast! They're going to sue us for all it's worth!"

"You can thank Roger Chalmers for this," Adrian told him, "He tried to kill us all."

"Oh not that again!" Iger rolled his eyes in disgust, "I've told you before, Detective, Roger would…!"

"Hold, hold that thought, it's, it's time I go make it a two-way street, "Adrian told him. Leaving Iger with a confused expression, he ran over to his assistant and her daughter. "So, you're not hurt?" he asked hesitantly, "I've got extra air if you need it."

"We're fine, Mr. Monk," Natalie told him, still looking a little puzzled by his most upbeat mannerisms, "Are you sure you're all right?"

"Oh, never felt better, never…oh no," Adrian noticed a pair of grim-looking paramedics wheeling out a gurney from the ride. "Don't, don't look," the detective pushed Julie's head ahead until the body had passed. "My collarbone, Mr. Monk!" she protested.

"You'll thank me later," he told her.

A loud hush had fallen over the crowd as the body was wheeled away. Disney walked briskly up to Adrian once it was gone. "That was no one in your group, right?" he had to know, looking guilty himself.

"No, it was the lady in the front right seat of the boat behind us," Adrian relayed his assessment, "Unfortunately the smoke was just too much."

"Now you can prove it was Chalmers?" the old man pressed him.

"Did I hear my name?" it was at this moment that Chalmers himself strolled into sight, with what Adrian deemed an arrogant step in his walk. "Oh not you again," he told the detective dismissively, "You're everywhere I go today!"

"Mr. Chalmers, I think everyone here would like to know why you saw fit to rig the ride to blow like this," Adrian inquired, "You can't deny you were in here earlier; I saw you."

"As did I," Barry the guard nodded.

"Oh, so just because I wanted to help fix the ride personally, you think I'm a killer," Chalmers told him with a mocking tone, "Well, for you information, I got a special call from maintenance here that it needed a brief tune-up; can't let people get hurt on a bad ride, you know."

"And before you say anything, Detective," Iger pushed his way forward, "Roger was with me when the call came in for the ride; it was legitimate. Since Roger knows how to fix items, he was the best man to call in short notice, so don't give me any more of your conspiracy theories."

"This wasn't a conspiracy, Mr. Iger, this was single-minded, premeditated attempted murder," Adrian told him, "And the ride was down earlier in the day and then reopened; I noticed when we walked by earlier. What would be the point of reopening in the same day if you weren't positive the problems were taken care of?"

"He also threatened us with an accident earlier in the day," Natalie pointed an accusing finger at Chalmers.

"Well, from your point of view it may have seemed like a threat," Chalmers said innocently, "I was merely pointing out that…"

"Hey, where do you think you're going?" Iger shouted. Adrian was striding toward the door on the side of the Pirates ride labeled AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. Inside, he walked up a long corridor to the control room. "You can't come back here!" Iger was complaining as he followed the detective in.

"He most certainly can," Disney was hot on his boss's heels, "I gave him free reign in the park."

"You WHAT?" Iger screamed in his face, "Without telling me? Do you really want to just give someone like him freedom to go around touching everything that…?"

"Look at this!" Adrian for once could barely contain his frustration at being put down. He couldn't stop himself from pushing Iger toward the nearest control panel, "The circuitry here's clearly been tampered with! The computer's been set to stop our car directly underneath where the fire started! And I smelled napalm and gunpowder the moment we entered that chamber! If this isn't sabotage, I don't know what is! You should count yourself lucky only one other person got killed with this!"

"He's right, Bob, the wiring's definitely off here!" Disney examined them himself, "Now if you want to prove any further that you're blind to…"

"Both of you stop!" Iger jerked out of their combined grasps. "Now look you two!" he said between deep breaths, "I am under a load of stress today with the Treasure Planet ride opening and the broadcast tonight, and the fact is you're making things ten times worse with your baseless rantings! I will iterate one last time, Roger Chalmers is not a murderer, and without positive proof, I will not stand groundless accusations against him, or any other member of this company! Now if you'll excuse me, I have more pressing business to attend to right now!"

He stormed out the door. "And Roy," he called over his shoulder, "I don't want to see him where he's not supposed to be any more, or you may find yourself looking for another job!"

"Oh I'm really scared!" Disney yelled sarcastically back at him, "Well, you might just see back on the net sooner than you think! Well Detective, it looks…Detective?" he looked around in surprise, for Adrian had vanished, "Detective?"

Adrian had in fact slipped out through a side door and was walking along a service corridor with his head hung low again. He preferred to be alone at the moment. It now looked like hope of catching and convicting Chalmers was all but gone, and part of him felt guilty for putting everyone else in danger. If only miracles could happen in real life, but that, he thought to himself with the frustration of the lack of leads for Trudy, was only wishful thinking…


	9. Confessionals

The sun was sinking down toward the horizon as Adrian trudged abysmally on his own through New Orleans Square. He could no longer contain many of his internal alarms. He strode over to a hot dog cart along the river and began rearranging the condiments. "Hey, what do you think you're doing!" yelled the vendor.

"They're out of order and not lined up," Adrian informed him loudly. He them seized the vendor's tongs and began rolling his hot dogs around in their bin until they were lined up as well as he could get them. "Shoelace is untied," he hailed down a passing man and bent down to tie it for him.

"Lay off!" the man pushed him back. Adrian stumbled in a partial daze over to the Haunted Mansion's queue, where he drew his nail file and scraped away at a paint bubble on the sign. After three minutes of hard scraping, which drew a large crowd of incredulous onlookers, he stepped back to note that all this had done was devoid the sign of much paint. He would ordinarily have fixed it, but he noticed that one of the dirt mounds surrounding a nearby tree was uneven with the others. He drew from under his tuxedo a small hand vacuum, then stooped over the mound and started sucking up the excess dirt.

"Everything all right there, fella?" came a big cheery voice right in his ear. Adrian yelped in shock and leaped high in the air. "Please don't do that!" he chided the performer in a Mickey costume now behind him, clutching his heart in shock, "You guys could kill me coming up like that when I'm not ready!"

"You don't look too happy there, bud," "Mickey" said in a rough interpretation of the character's voice.

"Oh, I'm never happy, Mickey," Adrian stood up, "But I am more unhappy than usual; a bad man's going to get away with murder, and I'll probably never find the note my wife left for me here. If it's still here; I'm starting to think it got thrown out a long time ago."

"Aw, don't give up fella," Mickey patted him on the shoulder, causing the detective to flinch in discomfort at being touched by a person in a costume; he could just guess how many germs suits like this would accumulate over the course of a day. "You know, there always can be a happy ending if you just wait long enough."

"Maybe," Adrian shrugged, "It's too bad real life isn't like a movie, and I've never really had a lot of happy endings."

"Maybe an autograph'll cheer you up," Mickey waved the detective over to an area nearby where many people were lined up for autographs with the mouse. Mickey hunched over the table and wrote down his John Hancock on a spare sheet of paper. Adrian glanced hard at it once it had been handed to him. "The dot on the I here, it's all off center, I can't take this," he announced out loud, "Can I have another one?"

He could tell the performer was giving him a strange look underneath the costume. Nonetheless, he wrote out another autograph for the detective. Adrian examined this second with equal scrutiny. "There's something wrong with the k, it's not the proper height," he complained.

Mickey couldn't suppress an aggravated growl as he wrote out a third one. "Tell me I wrote that right, please," he almost dared the detective as he handed him his latest signature.

"You did, Mickey, but it's not centered on the paper," Adrian told him after a hard examination, "Maybe if I wrote it myself we could…"

This statement prodded the performer under the costume to shout out loud something that made the many mothers and children in line gasp in horror. "Oh, uh, oops," he said nervously as many of the people that had been waiting for autographs stepped back, "Sometimes we just have long days and the grind get to…hey, where's everybody going?"

"There he is," came Paul's voice from out of the crowd. Barry the guard was also with him. "Where have you been?" the former asked as they approached the detective, "We've been looking all over the park; your friend Kight set out an all-points bulletin."

"I kind of wanted to be alone, Paul," Adrian told him, "Here, several autographs from Mickey for the kids; they're too uneven for me."

"Next time please tell us before you run off like that," Barry scolded him, "If your life's in danger you can't just wander off. And what have you been doing around here; one guy came up to me and said you'd asked him to change his shirt because it wasn't colored-coordinated with the scenery."

"Oh, I usually get like that when I'm depressed, things just start flowing out more," Adrian told him with an innocent shrug.

"Well, everyone else is finishing off the rides in Fantasyland," Paul informed him, "That probably gives us about twenty minutes, so would the Riverboat not freak you out too much? And let me reassure you," he added when Adrian started to nod to this, "That it's on an underground rail; we can't tip over."

"Floatation devices?" Adrian had to know.

"Enough for five hundred people," Barry told him definitely, "And if it makes you feel better, I can see to it they're all tested first."

"Well, it guess it's fine by me then," Adrian shrugged.

* * *

"You sure you can see everything from back there?" Paul had to ask Adrian.

"Yeah, yeah, I can see it all like a painting, crystal clear," Adrian told him. He was standing along the starboard side wall of the riverboat's middle deck (he'd determined upon boarding that the lower deck was too close to the water for comfort and the upper deck was too high and too open-ended), as far away from the railing as he could get. He was uncomfortable with the large number of people that had chosen to also join them on the riverboat, but he was determined to minimize his crowd fears for the rest of the evening, if only to try and at least look somewhat normal. "How's it coming with them?" he called to Barry nearby, where the guard was trying to keep watch on him while simultaneously testing all the ship's floatation devices as agreed on.

"Great, they all seem to work," Barry said. The detective heard him mutter under his breath, "And I'll be eighty by the time I get through with all of them!"

"Nice and relaxing, though, isn't it?" Paul gave up on his railing seat to join Adrian against the wall, "Nothing takes your cares away like a nice smooth ride like this, right?"

"I wouldn't know, I've never been relaxed," Adrian admitted. He took a long, deep breath. It was time, he felt, to bring up something that he'd been carrying with him most of the day. "And while we're alone like this, Paul—sort of," he said slowly, taking not of the five dozen or so people around them, "You might as well tell me, how long have you been seeing that other woman?"

Paul jumped very high in the air. "Wh-Wh-What?" he said nervously.

"It's been going on for at least three months now, hasn't it," Adrian told him, "You haven't told her you're married, have you? You take your wedding ring off a lot outside; there's a very noticeable tan mark on your finger where the ring would normally be. What's her name?"

"Her name's Diane," Paul said very softly. Tears were filling his eyes. "I don't know what I'm doing," he said, "She joined the unemployment office three months ago like you said. I don't know, maybe ten years of tedium with Sandy took its toll. She was beautiful and I fell for her. We'd meet after office hours, but it was only for dinner; I have not made love to her, I swear!"

"I see," Adrian could see he was telling the truth about this, "Now my important question is, do you still love your wife, whom you vowed to love and honor till death do you part, even after this?"

"Detective, I love Sandy with every ounce of my being!" Paul told him with an edge of sad hysteria, "I have never stopped loving her through this whole thing, and I don't want to see her get hurt by this in any way! For the last few weeks I've been unable to sleep at night, worrying about how she'd take it if she found out! It would break her heart. It would break the kids' hearts."

Adrian, despite his normal extreme disdain of adultery, felt sorry for the man before him. "Well, Paul, you want out of the affair, then?" he had to know.

"More than life itself right now," Paul sniffed, "But there's no way I can do it with them finding out and being hurt!"

"Well, if there's one thing I have found over the years, it's that the truth tends to hurt a little less," Adrian couldn't help putting an arm around him, "I think if you told Sandy that much, things wouldn't be as bad. Trust me on that."

He glanced down at his own wedding ring. "You don't have to worry," he said softly, as if expecting Trudy to be standing by listening to his every word, "I would never consider it, not even for a minute. You're always mine."

"Who're you talking to?" Paul gave him a strange look.

Before Adrian could answer, something out of the corner of his eye caught his attention. "What's that?" he asked out loud, daring to rush over to the railing. Darkness was falling quickly, but something could be seen floating in a small inlet of Tom Sawyer Island by the riverboat's night-lights. "Hello, I think we've got it!" he announced out loud. Without warning, he ran down the stairs to the lower deck and pushed his way through the crowds gathered along the railing there. He reached as far out with his claw as he could, but was still unable to reach the object, which was now clearly an overturned briefcase and wet papers.

"What's going on now?" Barry, still testing the floatation devices, came up behind him.

"Get on the horn, call Kight and Disney," Adrian told him, "I think we just found our missing financial records."

* * *

"I was worried sick about you," Natalie informed the detective about ten minutes later as they stood on the dock watching Kight and a special security team row out to the site on one of the Explorer Canoes.

"Well, everyone was in a bad mood and all, no point burdening them," Adrian shrugged.

"I'm really amazed you didn't kill anyone out there on your own, yourself included," Natalie continued, "You did better today than I thought, Mr. Monk."

"It was close a couple of times," Adrian admitted, "I have my moments. Like right now; this post's crooked."

He kicked at a dock piling with his foot, trying to get it straighter. There was a bump as the canoe returned to the dock. "The ink's drained a bit, but these are definitely financial documents," Kight announced, stepping out onto dry land, "We're going to take them down to the recovery room and see if we can dry them out enough to read exactly what they say and if we've got any of Chalmers's fingerprints."

"And then we've got to get back over to the sub lagoon," one of the security personnel spoke up, "Haven't been able to do any of the underwater work we wanted to all day."

"Underwater work?" Adrian abruptly made several obtuse hand gestures. A broad smile crossed him face. "You got it?" Natalie asked him.

"I got it," he told her, "I know how he made Faulk fly. We've just got to find…wait a minute, what's this one?"

He took hold of one of the soggy papers in the briefcase and examined it from several angles. "This looks just like the outside of the Treasure Planet building," he mused, "And this looks like a…"

A worried look crossed his face. "Chalmers's aim's more than just destroying financial records," he told everyone, "He wants the whole company. We can't let that ride opening ceremony go on."

"It starts in five minutes," Kight glanced at his watch, "Why?"

"Call Mr. Disney," Adrian started threading his way through the crowds back toward the Hub, "I'll explain on the way."


	10. Happy Endings

"OK, got your coffee for you right here, sir," Disher handed Stottlemeyer, who was reclined in the lieutenant's armchair in his apartment's den, a cup of decaffeinated brew. "Your roast chicken salad sandwich should be out of the oven soon."

Stottlemeyer gave him a strange look. "I don't want a roast chicken salad sandwich, Lieutenant," he told him, "I don't even remember asking you."

"Well, just figured you'd be hungry by now, sir," Disher told him. He fluffed the pillows he'd pushed under his boss's feet. "You want me to get you another blanket?" he asked.

"Randy," Stottlemeyer told him very slowly, "I may be depressed that things aren't going my way in court, but I am NOT a cripple! So if you'll please stop coddling me…"

Right, of course," Disher nodded quickly. "Ah, eight o'clock," he said, noticing the clock, "Show time." He turned on the TV and set it on Channel 7. "So, you'll think we'll see Monk?" he asked his superior as he plopped down on the sofa.

"My money says absolutely," Stottlemeyer told him, "You know Monk; there's never a dull moment."

* * *

Disney ran up to Adrian by a tree near the entrance to Tomorrowland. "I got you message; you've solved the case?" he asked.

"Mr. Disney, so I know for sure, have you noticed anything out of the ordinary with the oxygen tanks I'm told you use while cleaning the bottom of the sub lagoon?" Adrian asked him.

Disney snapped his fingers. "Now that you mention it, just the other day we noticed several tanks were abnormally low," he exclaimed, "Was that Roger?"

"He used compressed air," Adrian explained, "1,787 refers to pounds per square inch. He built a pair of crude oxygen tanks and filled them up with enough compressed air as he could, including those from your tanks. After he killed Faulk, he attached the tanks to his back. He aimed deliberately for the hole in the roof over the part of the Treasure Planet ride under construction. His goal was to get Faulk high enough in the air so the impact would shatter the tanks—he must have made them out of something breakable like cheap fiberglass. Something that people wouldn't get terribly suspicious about in a construction zone when his body was extracted from the pit his was hoping to drop him in."

"But how did he launch him from the ground?" the old man inquired.

"He must have had some sort of remote control launcher," Adrian told him, "If we can find that and the oxygen tanks, we've got Chalmers."

"But where would he put a remote detonator?" Disney pressed, "I hope he's not still holding onto it, because we certainly can't search without…"

"Hang on a minute, wasn't there a trash can right next to the stage?" Natalie realized, "If everyone was watching Faulk's body flying through the air, he could have easily just thrown it in without being noticed."

"Of course," Adrian realized this was a very logical idea, "That's it. He threw it out—with the trash," his face fell as he realized this meant he'd probably have to go rooting through mountains of trash.

"One problem," Kight glanced at his watch, "We would have started emptying all the trash cans for the night ten minutes ago."

"Where does it get unloaded?" Adrian pressed him.

"Garbage truck stays around back behind Toontown," the amusement park division manager said.

"That's not our only problem," Natalie said, pointing at the stage, "We've got an eminent explosion at hand here."

"Chalmers's rigged explosives to the front of the building; he hopes to ascend to the head of the company," Adrian told a horrified Disney, "When Iger opens the ride, the bombs'll go off."

"The plunger," Disney pointed to a large dynamite detonator set up next to the podium on the stage in front of the ride building, behind which Iger was now taking his place for the opening remarks before several TV cameras, "he must have rigged it…dozens of people could get hurt if…"

"You stall the ceremony as best you can," Adrian told him, "Natalie, help him if things go south. I'm going to find that remote control."

"Truck's this way," Kight waved him toward the back of the park, "I should tell you though, there's probably at least a ton of trash we'd have to root through."

"Exactly," Adrian grimaced heavily, "We may not come out alive."

They went through a pair of card-activated gates to emerge in a rear parking lot—out of which the garbage truck, fully loaded, was now pulling away. "Wait!" Adrian ran after the truck at full pitch, "Wait up! You've got evidence in there!"

* * *

"Here we go," Disher remarked, noticing the ceremonies were now airing on his TV after an inordinate amount of commercials had been aired, "Boy, it looks like they did another great job with this ride, don't you agree, sir?"

"Yeah, sure," Stottlemeyer sounded disinterested. He took a long sip of coffee. "I hope this speech doesn't go on all night. I hate it when they talk for hours on end."

* * *

"Well, I was wondering when you'd show up again," Sandy told Natalie as she rejoined them near the front of the stage, "Did you find him?"

"Oh yeah, we found him all right," Natalie kept her eyes glued on the stage, on which Iger seemed to be going through his speech faster than anticipated, "Listen, why don't we go a little further back from the stage?"

"But we can't see in the back!" Julie protested to her mother, "This is perfect here!"

"Trust me honey, you'll be safer as far away from the stage as possible right now," Natalie quickly pulled her far back into the crowd. Her eyes darted between Iger at the podium to Disney talking with Walter the guard near the side of the building—the latter nodded at what Disney was telling him and rushed in through the nearest access door—to Chalmers standing near the stairs at the side of the stage, looking quite nervous himself. How much longer was it going to take Monk to find the evidence?

* * *

"You'll have to work faster!" Kight shouted out the garbage truck's window to Adrian (he had commandeered it and was now driving it in circles around the parking lot).

"This is dangerous work!" Adrian shouted back from his perch on the lip of the back of the truck, "I'm going as fast as I can!"

He grabbed hold of another garbage bag with his claw, tore off the top, then picked it up and dumped its contents out on the parking lot. No sign of the remote control was visible from the overhead lights. He groaned and grabbed another one with the claw. He hoped it was in a bag up front; despite the urgency of the situation, he wasn't in the mood to climb into the back and root through the garbage. "Come on, come on!" he pleaded mentally, tearing through another one.

* * *

"And so we have chosen to continue the tradition started long ago when Walt Disney decided to open this park to the public," Iger announced grandiosely to his audience, "This ride marks the culmination of five years of intense planning by our Imagineers and designers, and two years of hard construction work. When you go through these gray portals and experience what we've concocted, I'm sure you'll agree that this ride is worth the waiting. And now, are you ready!"

The crowd cheered enthusiastically. "Well then, without further ado, let's get this open for you!" Iger started walking over to the giant plunger.

Disney quickly ran to the microphone. "Before we do, Bob," he said quickly, "I'd also like to add that when my uncle founded Disneyland, he had a great vision that families everywhere could enjoy an amusement experience like no other, and if he were to be standing here today, I think he would be quite proud of all of us."

"Thank you, Roy," Iger looked puzzled. He reached for the detonator again. "And now, I declare this ride…"

"You know Bob," Disney cut him off again, "People think that we only aim for the younger crowds, but no, we actually like to draw in the older people, and this ride has the thrills that the elusive target demographics will find quite appealing. I recall once when…"

"That's good Roy, that's good," Iger interrupt him in turn, "And now, I declare this ride…"

"Before you do," the old man interrupted him back, "Why don't we tell the people about the ride? It has over two thousand feet of track, features a maximum drop of a hundred and eighty-five feet, which I'm told is an indoor record, uses linear induction to get from zero to seventy in four seconds…."

"Has he gone nuts?" Josh stared at the stage in wonder.

"No," Natalie told him, "He's trying to keep all of us from getting killed. We'd better step back a little further."

* * *

Back in San Francisco, Stottlemeyer and Disher stared at Disney's soliloquy on the screen with equal confusion. "Is this supposed to be playing out like this?" the captain frowned.

"Maybe they're trying to cover till the end of the show, you know, to fill up the hour?" Disher suggested.

"Would they really do this for a whole hour, Randy?" Stottlemeyer pointed out.

"Well, it's Disney, anything can happen," the lieutenant suggested. Stottlemeyer decided not to say anything.

* * *

Back on the stage, Iger snatched the microphone away from Disney as he was relating the finer and basically irrelevant details of the ride's construction. "What the hell are the you doing?" he hissed once he'd covered the microphone.

"Don't push that plunger!" Disney warned him.

"Or what? The sky'll start falling?" Iger half-taunted him. Forcing a smile to the crowd, he stormed over to the plunger, grabbed hold of it with both hands, and announced through gritted teeth, "I now declare this ride open for you, the public!" He started to push the plunger….

"Don't!" in a flash Natalie had jumped on stage and tackled him to the floor. "Get off of me!" Iger shouted at her, trying to squirm out from under her grip. As he kicked away, one of his flailing legs hit the man in the Mickey costume, who had also been standing on the podium off to the side. Groaning in pain, the "mouse" stumbled and fell backwards onto the plunger. Immediately, the entire front of the ride building burst into flames and started falling forward toward the stage. Everyone on it just managed to dive off it in time before it crashed down with tremendous force. The crowd screamed and retreated backwards away from the debris. It was among this chaos that Walter the guard came out of the side entrance—which was away from the blast site—clutching several large porcelain fragments in his hands. "Found it in the pit like you said, Mr. Disney," he had to shout at the old man to be heard of the crowd and flames.

Disney hauled himself to his feet and held up the microphone. "Tell everyone about it, Walter," he said into it, handing it to the guard.

"I found the remnants of an oxygen tank in the pit like Detective Monk said," Walter told the crowd, which had started calming down, "Looks like it shattered on the board they put over it. I did a preliminary fingerprint scan. Mr. Chalmers's prints are the only ones on them. There's some blood on it too."

The crowd was mostly quite in confusion. "You see?" Natalie shouted to Iger as she hauled him rather roughly to his feet from the spot where she'd flung him off the stage following the accident, "He's set you up!"

She pointed an accusing finger at Chalmers, who in a flash drew a gun. "Hands up, all of you!" he shouted at everyone with fifteen feet. There were screams as people complied with his wish.

"Roger, what the hell are you doing?" Iger gasped in shock, "Don't tell me it's actually true!"

"You senile idiot!" Chalmers derided him, "This is my company now! Good night, Bob."

He put his finger on the trigger. Without warning Natalie grabbed his arm from behind before he could fire and yanked it backwards. Howling in pain, he delivered a sharp elbow to her ribs and pushed her to the ground. "Big mistake, lady!" he snarled, pointing the barrel right at her head…

When without warning there was a loud crash as the garbage truck smashed through the building façade in reverse and swerved toward him. Chalmers froze up white with fear as it screeched to a stop inches from him. He breathed a brief sigh of relief…that quickly turned back to terror as the back end tilted upward, burying him under an avalanche of garbage. Adrian stuck his head out the passenger window. "Sorry," he called, "My mistake The switch wasn't clean."

"Did you find it?" Disney ran up to the cab.

"We found it!" Adrian thrust a black remote control into his hands, "It was a nightmare getting it; you wouldn't happen to have a shower near here? Too much trash in…"

"Walter, do a trace on it for prints," Disney handed the remote to the guard. He walked around to the back of the truck again as Chalmers fought his way out of the garbage, sputtering loudly. "Well, having fun, Roger?" he told his now ex-employee half-mockingly.

"I hate garbage!" Chalmers swiped away frantically at his now ruined suit, "Somebody get it off me, quick!"

"Like I always say," Natalie laughed to Disney as they watched the villain's predicament, "You should always put trash in its place."

* * *

"Did that just happen?" Stottlemeyer stared in wonder at the screen, "Did we just see Adrian Monk driving a garbage truck?"

"I think so," Disher was equally shocked to have seen it, "He says all the time he has his moments. This'll be interesting when he gets back to hear how it came to this."

* * *

Fifteen minutes later, and with the television cameras still rolling live, Chalmers's fingerprints had been confirmed on the remote control. Adrian smiled in satisfaction as he watched the Anaheim police officers that had been dispatched to the park leading a disgruntled Chalmers away. Another case had been brought to a successful conclusion.

"Detective Monk," Iger tapped him abruptly on the shoulder. After the detective had gotten over the shock, he told him while holding the microphone, "I believe I owe you a sincere apology for not believing you earlier."

He extended his arm. Adrian reached forward, flicked some fuzz off the top of the microphone, then shook Iger's hand. "Apology accepted," he said, snapping his hand frantically at Natalie nearby for a wipe.

"If there's anything I can do to repay you," the company president told him, "just name it and I'll do it."

"Absolutely anything?"

"Absolutely anything."

"Adrian thought long and hard. Another smile crossed his lips. "Actually, Mr. Iger," he said into the microphone, "There are two things you can do for me."

"Certainly, name them."

"First, as I was telling Mr. Kight earlier," Adrian nodded in Kight's direction, "I'd like it if you profiled my wife's murder on your new crime stopping show this fall. And if you could, his son's death, too. Maybe somebody out there knows something they could share that could ultimately lead to closure for the both of us. Because waiting without closure is one of the worst plagues imaginable, am I right?"

He glanced at Kight, who was nodding, looking very touched that Adrian would have done this for him. Apparently so was the crowd, as they were now giving him a very large ovation. Adrian grimaced; this made him notice how many people there were again.

"Consider it done," Iger snapped his fingers at an aide, who wrote down something on a notepad, "And your second request?"

"Well," Adrian chuckled to himself, "I happen to know an aspiring young writer by the name of Benjamin Fleming. When I last saw him, he'd written an incredible script, one that I think the public might like."

"Right, we'll give it the green light," Iger nodded at his aide again.

"But I can only let you have it under several conditions," Adrian held up his hand before the aide could finish writing, "First, no matter who you bring on board, you have to stay true to his vision of the story; he witnessed a lot of the events he wrote about firsthand. Second, I want him and his mother to receive permanent royalties from the project as long as they live. Send the first checks here," he took the pencil off the aide and wrote down—perfectly along the blue lines—what he knew to be the Flemings' most recent address. "Third, please don't blind him with a showbiz lifestyle. He's a great kid, I don't want him to be changed for the worst."

"Right, we'll keep all those in mind," Iger told him, "And by what the director's telling me, we're about out of time for the show, so why don't you wave good night to America, Detective?"

Adrian turned to the camera and weakly smiled. He walked toward away from the cameras once the signal had been given to stop rolling (leaving Iger saying ecstatically to the operators, "Tell me you've got it all on tape! Our ratings are going to go through the roof!"). "Well, it looks like someone's starting to get a bit of an ego," Natalie told him jokingly once he'd joined her.

"Huh?" he was confused.

"You just sold that script about your life."

"I didn't do it for me, I did it for Benjy," he told her, "He deserves to have something published, and if it's that, so be it." He turned to Julie. "Try not to e-mail him about it," he told her, well aware of their continuing correspondence, "I want him to be surprised."

"Are we going to get residuals as well if they ask for a sequel and he writes about what's happened after we entered your life?" she had to ask him.

Before Adrian could answer, the Kopeckis materialized out of the crowd, which was now by and large starting to head for the exits. "Let me just say, Mr. Monk, that was absolutely incredible," Molly told him, "Can we take home your autograph?"

She held up her brother's autograph book. "If you say so," Adrian shrugged and started writing out his name—very slowly. "We'll be waiting for payment for the crash helmets," Josh informed the detective while he finished writing, "If you're late by more than thirty days, we're calling the IRS."

"Well, Adrian, it was pleasure meeting you," Paul shook his hand, prompting another Adrian to dig quickly through his wipe briefcase, which was now almost half empty after have been completely full in the morning, "I'm hoping things'll go well for us after we leave here tonight."

He put a warm arm around his wife and gave the detective a wink. "I'm sure they will, Paul," Adrian winked back, "I think things are going to go great for all of you."

"Well, it was great seeing you again, "Natalie gave her friend a parting hug, "We'd probably better get on the road ourselves; it's going to be a long ride up to my parents' place tonight."

"All right, you keep in touch," Sandy waved goodbye as she and her family walked off into the crowds. "Nice people, very nice," Adrian remarked once they were gone, "It sort of felt good being around normal people for…"

"Mr. Monk," Disney came running up to him. He was holding something in his palm. "Before you leave, one of the maintenance people found this lodged in a tree near the old Skyway line."

He handed the detective a yellowed paper. Adrian dared to take it with his bare hands. His eyes started to water as he read what it said. "So it looks like Trudy's knight in shining armor found what he came for, huh?" Natalie told him with a smile.

Adrian didn't say anything, but he didn't have to. "Thank you, thank you for everything," he shook Disney's hand without bothering to go for another wipe, "This, this makes my whole day."

"Well we aim to please," Disney told him, "Have a nice evening."

He walked off into the crowd. "Well, I'll put this in a safe place for you," Natalie took Trudy's note out of her boss's hands and started to fold it.

"Don't do that!" Adrian snatched it back off her and frantically smoothed it back out, "This needs to be preserved! We shouldn't even be touching it like this!"

He opened briefcase number six and gently placed Trudy's note inside. "Once we get to your parents, we're going to get a frame and put it in an airtight waterproof place," he went on as they walked toward the gate.

"Why didn't you bring a frame of your own with you?" Natalie had to know.

"Hey, I'm not perfect," he told her, "And the first clean bathroom we get to, we'll have to stop. I've been holding my bladder out for nine hours now."

"Nine hours?" she was shocked.

"You honestly think I'm going to go in one of these bathrooms?" he pointed out, "After people have been locked in here all day? That's worse than suicide! And you can call me crazy, but don't call me suicidal!"

"Same old Mr. Monk," Julie remarked with a yawn, leaning her head gently against his side, "Can't live with him, but you can never live without him."

THE END


End file.
